Salvation [Doctor Who, Diversion 5]

Salvation by Steve Lyons

4 January 1999

​I'm a little surprised that it took me two years to actually do a novel for this marathon. I'm not altogether sure if Big Finish audios have surpassed them in quantity these days or not, but there are still a whole heap of licensed books for Doctor Who, and yet I covered eight audios before I even managed one book! I've already passed the point of opportunity for a lot of First Doctor novels, most notably Empire of Glass which I had to axe after my long hiatus, but I expect them to be a more regular occurrence from this point onward. Still, this remains the only First Doctor novel in the queue, and as such is an outlier.

As I've mentioned before, this is a difficult era to write for, and new additions to the realm of Doctor Who prose (as also mentioned previously) seem to run the risk of trying too hard to be "mature". This is seen most plainly in this book during the appalling scene where Joseph tries to force himself on Dodo, but fortunately the book doesn't hit quite the same point of crassness again. Though that scene annoyed me for a while, I was back on board again once we reached the part where the Doctor and Dodo sit in Battery Park on the grass together, chatting and eating hot dogs. I thought that bit was a brilliant piece of character work which would have slotted right into the modern series. It's easy to see how a lot of the DNA of the novels published in the 1990s eventually made its way into the show proper when it was revived in 2005.

The book also deserves major props for trying to make an actual character of Dorothea Chaplet. As of this writing, I have already watched The Ark and I cannot say that I'm overly impressed with her so far. I could blame John Wiles for this, but something had to have gone wrong at multiple levels to turn out such a non-character as Dodo, especially given that foreknowledge tells me that she doesn't improve much before her departure. I'll try to form my own opinions, but first impressions seem not very promising. Despite that, Salvation actually managed to make me care. Lyons does a fine job of sketching a Dodo who's a naive but sympathetic young girl, desperate for escape after the death of her parents. Time is even given to explain her mysteriously changing accent, noting how she had to learn how to switch to RP after moving to the London area and being mocked by her peers. This is someone who could have actually lived in 1960s Britain, and it's nice to see her being portrayed with significantly more life to her character.

The central conceit of the novel is an eye-catching one, with latter-day gods walking the streets of 1960s New York. Just getting to see New York of this period in Doctor Who is a treat, as aside from the brief Empire State Building segment of The Chase, contemporary America is mostly ignored throughout the classic run of Who. The cultural differences noticed by the characters are quite fun, particularly the bit where Dodo is gobsmacked by seeing a color TV! The gods themselves (actually aliens, shocking millions of readers) are the most interesting concept put forward by Salvation. In a real sense, the story doesn't even really have an antagonist, and as the Doctor points out, the gods are victims just as much as the people they inadvertently kill. As a species, they have no thought or form of their own and instead react to the perceptions and expectations of others. When caught by army personnel after landing on Earth, one takes the form of a little gray alien. The rest begin to take the shape and powers of gods when reading the collective subconscious of a population desperately hoping for order and stability in a world torn apart by the social conflicts of the 1960s. The Patriarch even briefly becomes a bog-standard menacing Doctor Who villain when perceived as such by the Doctor! (I choose to be charitable by thinking this is intentional...) It's a wonderfully meta idea - a species of beings who only think, who only really exist when they are perceived.

The culmination of this is their own world, a place which the human followers sent there believe to be Heaven, an entire world of such beings where the dreams of humanity are made manifest. Joseph, who has been becoming steadily more and more human for the whole story unlike the others of his race who have been trying to match the human idea of gods, eventually starts to influence this world with his own thoughts and desires. Dodo, who has been having a frankly rather sad dream where her parents are alive and she is a princess, even starts to become affected by Joseph's perceptions, and almost marries him before he realizes this is wrong and puts a stop to it. He's even "excommunicated" by the Patriarch and becomes essentially a real human before the end of the story.

This is an interesting idea. A creature who essentially does not exist becomes so "real" because of the expectation of the humans around him that he not only becomes functionally human himself, but even starts to shape those humans in turn. There is a point to be made here in that fictional characters can be startlingly real depending on the perspective of the viewer, reader, or listener, and that just as these characters are shaped by an author, they can affect real people right back.

Conversely, it also puts into focus how, as soon as I stopped reading, Dodo as presented in this story ceased to exist, replaced by her vastly inferior counterpart from thirty-four years before. Although I'll keep this characterization of her in mind, I can't help but to feel that these post-mortem rewrites of her character are the best we'll ever get. It's a pity, but even though we've been rewriting the past for the last several reviews, this art has its limits. To mangle two quotes at once, I guess we're all stories in the end, companions of a Time Lord even more so.

That's all I have for tonight. We're set to explore many, many more stories written by Steve Lyons in the medium-to-distant future of this marathon. In fact, I was surprised by just how many, as I didn't know what he had written until I checked his bibliography earlier. I liked this book, on the whole, so I'm interested to see what else he's cooked up. For now, it's back to 1966, and The Ark is next.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 29 April 2020.)

The Massacre [Doctor Who, Story 22]

​The Massacre by John Lucarotti and Donald Tosh

5 - 26 February 1966

It didn't occur to me until I sat down to write this review that it had been such a long time since I'd written about the work of John Lucarotti. The last occasion was when I wrote my review of The Aztecs, two and a half years ago. This is also to be the final such occasion, as notwithstanding a partial script submitted for 1975 and some work on the Target novelization range in the 1980s, this is his last contribution to the series. Although his tenure as a writer is not quite long enough to justify a "word on" post like Verity Lambert, nor were his innovations long-lasting enough, it is fitting to take a moment and acknowledge his work on the earliest years of Doctor Who. All three of his serials are (spoilers) among the best of their period, and have proved highlights of this marathon. It is sad to know that there won't be any more of his scripts to look forward to, but as more and more essential aspects of "Who-ness" have started to accrue around the program, it's hard to argue that this style of story hasn't had its day. There will be two more of its ilk from other writers (The Smugglers and The Highlanders) but after that, they will disappear from Doctor Who forevermore - on TV, anyway.

As skillful as Marco Polo, The Aztecs, and (albeit to a lesser extent) The Massacre might be, it's impossible to shake the feeling that we aren't actually watching Doctor Who here. Very little of the essence of these three stories actually lives on in future ones, even excepting the general lack of pure historicals from here on out. Even modern historical stories owe far more of their DNA to The Time Meddler, ultimately, than The Aztecs or The Massacre. Marco Polo, being the prototypical celebrity historical, is the outlier of the three, but even then it barely resembles more modern iterations. It's a bizarre avenue - another alternate history. But it's difficult to argue that the show wasn't better off jettisoning this format eventually. As intriguing as it can be to observe how alien the past is, there are only so many ways that the show can have this same formula play out. Put plainly, it is a little depressing when the Doctor and company are forced into a situation where they can't fix anything. There's only so many ways that you can play the trick of "at least you saved one person" (in the case of Autloc and, dubiously, Anne Chaplet), and it will frankly take until 2008 for the show to pull off such a plot right. So although we enjoy the pure historical, it must be said that I find few reasons to miss them.

Not to get too far ahead of myself, but this is one area in which I find it easy to credit the current iteration of the program. Series 11 had two pseudo-historicals, each so light on their science fiction elements that they were almost pure historicals in their own right (Rosa and Demons of the Punjab), but which still had a fantastic amount of nuance, gravitas, and maturity that made them highlights of that season for me. It could have been a return to form for a genre of Doctor Who story which had its heyday so long ago, but with the apparent return of the somewhat formulaic Davies-era celebrity pseudo-historical in Series 12, it seems that this was only a brief aberration in and of itself, just like the original pure historical. More's the pity.

To focus specifically on The Massacre, I think it does suffer, like most of the Wiles era, for being too dark. The darkness of it is done splendidly, lending to great moments such as Steven's (brief) departure from the TARDIS and the Doctor's soliloquy, but on the back of The Daleks' Master Plan and the ending of The Myth Makers, it has started to feel like a little much. I'm glad that some lighter stories are on the near horizon, though it does also have to be pointed out that the abrupt about-face from this darker direction and into Dodo's arrival on the set feels very strange.

I would be more annoyed if I thought it was some sort of backing down from wherever the storyline was going - even when I don't particularly like a story direction, I always prefer to see it play out rather than get axed halfway. I'm a strange creature like that, there really is no winning with me. But I do happen to know that the oncoming tonal shift is more to do with changes in the production staff. Although we've only had his production team, including Donald Tosh (who authored some of this story) since The Myth Makers, a span of four serials as of The Ark, this small number of stories is deceptive due to the mammoth size of DMP. Still, it's a blink of an eye next to Verity's tenure. Like Lucarotti, Wiles won't get a post of his own, but I thought I'd segue into it now, as despite remaining on for the next serial, his vision for the show ends, for all intents and purposes, here. I'm too charitable to quite say "good riddance", but I agree with the chorus of voices that has said over time that his vision for Doctor Who was unsustainable in the long run, so it's probably for the best, even though many of his episodes were great.

For the reasons stated above, Steven's sudden decision not to leave, after it's been built up so expertly, rubs me the wrong way, though it is understandable that they'd want to keep Peter Purves on a little longer to lend a bit more stability as the show begins to enter a rocky period. And I'm hardly about to complain, because once again, Steven is great in this story. With the Doctor off screen for almost the whole serial, he becomes the leading man. I think it was a deft trick leaving a man from the distant future as our eyes in this historical landscape, as its remoteness to him leaves him totally lost, which makes us empathize with him. He still tries his best, but out of his depth as he is, he's forced to move with the story instead of shaping it, forced by the machinations of the nobles ruling France at this time.

William Hartnell, of course, still gets a lot of good stuff to work with during this serial, notably his scenes as the Abbot of Amboise. The ambiguity over whether this is the Doctor or not is an interesting dimension to add to the story, though based on textual and non-textual clues, I'd say that he is probably not. Although the local Catholic nobles seem suspicious of him, this could just as easily be a result of the paranoia and fear running rampant in Paris at the time this story is set. The fact that he drops stone cold dead before the end, as witnessed by innumerable people, suggests that actually being the Abbot would have been beyond even the Doctor's powers of disguise. It's just another curious lookalike, something which will happen more than once in the show's future.

Even when he isn't having fun getting to play another character for once, Hartnell is on form in what little of the serial he is actually the Doctor for. His excitement to meet a local alchemist is infectious and reminds us, once more, that the Doctor is first and foremost a man of science. The fact that he is as excited to meet an obscure 16th century alchemist as most people would be to meet a great celebrity, is immensely endearing. His hidebound refusal to give in to Steven's reasoning at the end of the story puts a light on this Doctor's inflexibility, but unlike in previous stories (The Aztecs, The Sensorites) where his stubbornness is ultimately shown to be correct, or at least not challenged, once Steven leaves the strain finally breaks the Doctor. The incredible vulnerability of his scene alone in the TARDIS shows that being forced to safeguard history isn't something he takes pleasure in. Instead, it's a terrible burden, one which, he tells us, time and time again forces him to leave behind those he cares about. For the first time, one of the central tensions of the Doctor's character is laid bare, and the lonely god we know from some later stories begins to take shape.

Aside from shockingly good character moments, the subject matter is pretty daring in and of itself. Religious conflict is never a politically neutral subject even in the best of times, much less so in a Britain where the scars of the Troubles had not yet been opened. Although an effort is made to be even-handed and show the humanity of both sides of this Massacre, it's hard to dispute that the Huguenots come out in the more sympathetic light, which makes sense given that they were the ones being Massacred and not the other way around. There are still absolutists on the Huguenot side (like Gaston), but we're made to feel for de Coligny most of all, who seems like a decent fellow, while the royalists are backed by coldblooded creatures like Catherine de' Medici. This Protestant leaning might be a reflection of Great Britain's historical values, and it might not. I'm not really qualified to say. What I can say is that this is the sort of theme to inspire deep thought, and it lends The Massacre with a lot of weight.

Overall, despite suffering greatly from being the most missing Doctor Who story and from a baffling final few minutes, The Massacre is a worthy addition to complete the John Lucarotti hat trick, and definitely another enjoyable outing in my eyes. Before proceeding with the rest of Season Three, we'll make a literary pit stop for the first novel of the marathon, Salvation.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 27 April 2020.)

The Perpetual Bond, The Cold Equations, and The First Wave [Doctor Who, Diversion 4]

The Perpetual Bond, The Cold Equations, and The First Wave, by Simon Guerrier

February - November 2011

​

I have to say, it is totally fascinating how well-established the idea of a post facto companion is in Doctor Who media. Fans of most long-running series would revolt, I think, if an officially licensed entry tried to "retcon" in a new main character into an epoch that's already long over, but in our funny little section of the universe, barely anyone seems to bat an eye. Oliver Harper isn't exactly the first, but he is, nevertheless, the first we'll actually have a look at. I find myself returning again to the recurring idea of rewriting the past. For a series that said you can't do such a thing in its first season, Doctor Who still seems to do it quite a bit! A companion like Oliver could never have existed during the time period in which his stories are set.

There is, of course, the fact that in 1966, the Sexual Offences Act which legalized male homosexuality in England and Wales had not yet been passed, and so there wasn't a prayer that a character like Oliver could be written into a BBC program. It wouldn't be until after the series' revival in 2005 that an explicitly LGBT character would be included in the show. But that's just the obvious one. It's worth pointing out that he also differs from the other companions we've had so far in having a discrete character arc that's delineated from the moment he's introduced. His end informs his beginning, and everything in between. This in and of itself would likewise be revolutionary for this period, where serialization (and most likely the lack of six decades of progress in the medium of television writing at large) means that the characterization of companions is startlingly ad hoc and treated almost as an afterthought.

We saw a little bit of course correction on this in, for example, the Sara Kingdom audios (also authored by Guerrier of course), where a past companion was given a little more material to work with. This gives old characters a new life and new ways to grow, but there are limitations on what you can do without creating a new character entirely. The natural consequence: more post facto companions. Sorry, I do go on, I just find this phenomenon totally fascinating.

Bringing it all back now. Does having the benefit of originating in writing of the 21st century mean that Oliver Harper is necessarily a more successful character than his costar, Steven Taylor? Considering the short tenure he actually gets (only these three audio stories), Oliver doesn't get the screentime (or speakertime) necessary to really grow on you like he would have, had he been a season-long regular like other companions. Thus while he isn't that memorable as a character, I can still call his presence in this trio of audios a success, as he enables the central narrative thread of the trilogy, one which in my opinion does fit in quite well with the Wiles era. Steven and the Doctor's angst over living on "borrowed time" is surely felt after the rapid-fire departure of Vicki, Katarina, and Sara, with all the mortal peril still endangering our two leads on screen at this time, and particularly so knowing the behind-the-scenes drama including Wiles' desire to push Hartnell out.

But, put into so few words, no, I still think Peter Purves is the star of this trilogy. He and the "new guy" have some decent chemistry and a number of great scenes together. As is usual for Companion Chronicles starring Purves, he voices the Doctor as well. This means that Oliver suffers a little for never getting to actually interact with "his" Doctor, and even the Doctor as impersonated by Peter Purves is relatively less prominent in these stories than he would have been in a televised serial from this period. Thus, while Oliver is good, he's gone too soon to make much of an attachment to. I do think this was intentional in a way, but it did make it difficult to get invested.

The final scene of The First Wave where the Doctor and Steven finally get tired of running and, believing they are on "borrowed time", give themselves up to be killed by the Vardan, is quite chilling. It's easy to believe that the two of them would feel this way after having lost so much and dealt with so much death, such that Oliver subverting it by sacrificing himself is a great twist. Considering that the story belabored how their deaths were a fixed point in time, though, I'm confused that the deaths being prevented isn't treated as a bigger deal. And in the very next story chronologically (The Massacre) the Doctor still insists that you can't change history! I'm sure there's more to be read into this, but that's all I have for now.

Overall I did like this trilogy, with the last part being by far the best and the middle part the weakest. I'll have a lot more of import to say about The Massacre, which is next.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 27 April 2020.)

The Daleks' Master Plan, episodes 8 - 12 [Doctor Who, Story 21, Part 2]

The Daleks' Master Plan, episodes 8 - 12, by Dennis Spooner & Terry Nation

1 - 28 January 1966

​

We rejoin the main adventure with something of a New Year's hangover going on. It feels like everyone stumbled out of Feast of Steven still halfway sauced, first onto a cricket pitch and then Trafalgar Square on New Year's Eve. It does take away slightly from the tension when we finally cut back to the Daleks and their allies on Kembel. Still, the scenes we get there, while brief, offer a chilling look into the Daleks' endgame as they exterminate Trantis, and Chen, it seems, finally starts to sense the change in the wind and gets nervous. Although episodes 8 - 10 feel very inconsequential in the long run, we do get to say hello to the Monk again. Peter Butterworth remains a deft hand at comedic bumbling and little jokes as part of his performance and keeps things entertaining, even if by the end of the Ancient Egypt segment a small part of me was hoping to get exterminated.

Once we return to the plot - uhh, return to Kembel - the crew is all business again, as the Daleks now have the real taranium core and nothing stands between them and conquest of the universe. Sara in particular becomes all business again rather quickly, very grave... Her determination to stop the evil machinations of Chen and the Daleks is clear, and it's well acted. While the Doctor is absent from episode 11, Sara and Steven are left to sort things out by themselves, and do a pretty good job of it without their companion's guiding hand there. Tensions are high, though, and the scene where they argue in the jungle is surprising, but quite good.

It's often pointed out how silly it is that the Daleks went to all the effort of getting the cooperation of the delegates from the outer galaxies, and then just locked them up anyway before the invasion could begin. I feel it does make a small sort of sense, though... The Daleks were noticeably growing more paranoid throughout the serial, with the Black Dalek in particular becoming more erratic the longer his forces failed to capture the Doctor and his companions. Maybe they're just tying up loose ends, or maybe they just decided that with the Time Destructor absolutely secured, they no longer needed the outer galaxies' fleets as backup. Who knows?

At any rate, before the Daleks can dispose of the delegates, they're rescued by Sara and Steven. It's a very interesting scene, with Chen recognizing Sara and, incredibly, believing that she's here to rescue him out of loyalty! There's barely any visual reference, but you can tell just how hatefully Sara glares at him when he comes out. The conflict the two feel over letting all these miserable characters free is a nice touch as well, and they make the right choice at the end of the day to think of the greater good and let the treacherous delegates run off to organize their forces against the Daleks. Of course, it backfires when Chen, desperately clinging to the idea of his own relevance, captures the two and brings them to the Daleks. Overall, a brilliant episode, very tense and foreboding, and the best is yet to come.

Though delusional to his last breath, Chen manages to keep a menacing sort of presence. It's astonishing how he really thinks the Doctor wants to replace him; for a self-serving man, the idea of someone being selfless in the face of impossible odds is absolutely inconceivable for him. And his final breakdown, trying to order around the Daleks while they stare coldly and say nothing, before finally being gunned down, couldn't be more fitting. And at last, the Doctor appears, having been working behind the scenes to get into the Dalek base and rescue Sara and Steven. I almost didn't notice Hartnell was gone, since Jean and Peter were doing a pretty good job of carrying the last episode, but one gets the sense he was actually doing something important while he was off screen, almost presaging the machinations of the Second or Seventh Doctors. The bit where he uses a Dalek as a shield to nab the Time Destructor and escape with his companions is fantastic.

And Sara, selfless Sara, ignores the Doctor's instructions by going back against his wishes, to help rescue him. And it's hard to say if she actually succeeds in this, in the end... The Doctor might have been fine without Sara's help, by my reckoning, and the weapon he's just stolen will take a terrible toll on them both. When we started this adventure, the Time Destructor was just a name, a hushed terror, another in a long line of superweapons with an obscure purpose, and you go into this almost expecting the Time Destructor to be the same thing. It's only in the final episodes that we discover that it harnesses time itself as a lethal weapon, rewinding or accelerating its effects to wither away jungles, or revert Daleks back to an embryonic state. And it's terrifying. As the Time Destructor continues its lethal work, the wind howls, and the very planet starts to decay into dust around the Doctor and Sara. It turns the stomach to watch Sara rapidly age, and the Doctor become weak and fall to the ground, and even more so when Sara finally wastes away. Even having known it was coming, it was still shocking to watch, and has a lot of punch to it after spending several episodes and four Big Finish audios with the character.

Eventually the Time Destructor spends itself, and the Doctor rises from the ashes. Though he tries to play things off, showing Steven the shriveled Dalek mutants left dead in the sand with his usual twinkle, it sounds incomplete. Steven won't have any of it and cuts him off.

"Bret, Katarina... Sara."

​

And we can almost imagine the Doctor's face falling.

"What a waste. What a terrible waste."

​

With only a hollow victory to bring with them, the Doctor and Steven depart.

It's brilliant stuff, it really is. After the grim beginning of this serial in the jungles of Kembel, something equally grim to end it almost seemed like an assured conclusion. But although I really, really enjoyed The Daleks' Master Plan, and even though the ending was brilliant, I can't help but to feel that there must have been another way, that maybe a ray of hope wasn't uncalled for.

In short, I liked it, but I would most certainly hate if Doctor Who was like this all the time.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 12 April 2020.)

The Sontarans [Doctor Who, Diversion 3]

The Sontarans by Simon Guerrier

14 December 2016

​

You know, I can almost imagine finding this on a pawn shop bookshelf, with "Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Sontarans!" and a Target logo emblazoned on the cover. Although this is the most recent release I've reviewed on this marathon so far (released nine months before I started), it is in every sense more of a conscious attempt to emulate its period than the audio stories I just reviewed. The Sontarans represents something like The Daleks or The Ice Warriors, a 1960s introductory story for one of the series' iconic monsters, which in this case of course never existed. It's impressive that Guerrier can so easily switch to writing a story close in style to the original series when the last work of his I reviewed was a more conscious departure. The fact that they are both very obviously a part of this era despite their differences is a testament to the skill of the writer.

There is a decidedly "golden age", Dan Dare atmosphere to parts of this piece. Some of that may have to do with the theremin in the soundtrack, though the Space Security shootout with armored spacemen might also have a thing to do with it... A few more things recall this period, such as inexplicable remarks on the Doctor's part (his statement that it's been a long time since he fought in war), his conspicuous failure to deny that he's a human being, and the Nil are sort of like the Thals or the human stragglers in the Sensorite sewers in how they suddenly turn up after being thought long dead. It feels like it could have gone out in early 1966, with only Guerrier's deft touch for character work and the obvious aberration of the Sontarans to make it stand out.

Peter Purves is our narrator this time, though Jean Marsh voices Sara once more. Purves also lends his voice to the Doctor, and it's well done. It's not exactly a straight impression, but he captures Hartnell's essence well, and in a way which I think shows a lot of affection for the departed actor. We get not just a glimpse inside Steven's head in this story, but a little more about his backstory than was actually presented in the show. His past as someone who left war behind fits well into this story. I was also a little amused by the moment where he feels a pang of jealousy when Sara and Ellis smile at one another, something which made sense in the context of the two companions, but the possibility of which had never occurred to me previously.

Sara comes through well, too. Though this isn't as much of a deep dive into her as a character as in what the previous post covered, we still get a great look at how she operates as a companion. At the start, even though she's eager to go wander off into the flower fields, she still has a military mindset about her, making sure things are safe up ahead. She also settles back very easily into her Space Security routine when she's thrown into action with the officers on the asteroid.

The guest cast is also good here, with Dan Starkey putting in as great of an effort as always. He's shifted back to a voice that sounds a bit more like Linx from The Time Warrior than the New Who Sontarans which Starkey usually voices, which impressively gets across how much earlier these Sontarans are. I was startled when I realized he didn't voice Gage, since I'd been thinking for the whole audio that Gage must be a Sontaran since something in his voice sounded like Starkey's. And then I realized that Ellis, the soldier who isn't a Sontaran spy, was the one who was voiced by Starkey and I hadn't even noticed! That left me totally bewildered for a bit. Total Twilight Zone moment.

The story is capped off by a brilliantly Doctor-ish moment where the Doctor talks the Sontaran commander out of firing on and destroying a passing human civilian fleet by convincing him that it wouldn't be a sporting battle. It's a speech that wouldn't feel out of place in the New Series, but still doesn't sound totally inappropriate for Hartnell's Doctor.

I hadn't known going in that the story leads directly into Volcano, and realizing that was quite a nice moment. As nice of a story as this was, I found myself eager to get back to the show again and see how this Dalek plot as going to sort itself out. The last five episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan are next.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 11 April 2020.)

Home Truths, The Drowned World, and The Guardian of the Solar System [Doctor Who, Diversion 2]

Home Truths, The Drowned World, and The Guardian of the Solar System by Simon Guerrier

2008 - 2010

​
This will be the marathon's second post about an audio adventure. I would consider Farewell, Great Macedon, which I reviewed back in 2017, a path not taken, an alternate history of Doctor Who, something which could have aired in 1964 if production had gone differently. Companion Chronicles by Big Finish are a different creature, an aberration. They're non-diegetic, in a way, a retcon (if canon was a concept I took seriously anyway). This isn't a reflection on their value, naturally! I happen to find the First Doctor era Companion Chronicles to be some of my favorite non-televised material for Doctor Who. Some of the credit can be laid at the feet of the author of this three-part series, Simon Guerrier, who I must say has an incredible knack for capturing both the feeling of the era and the characters.

This knack for character writing (which, I hasten to point out, is shared by many of the writers for this range, I'm only singling Guerrier out for credit as I'm a fan) offers something that was missing during these 1960s stories. As much as I have loved the journey so far, one flaw that jumps out to a 21st century first-timer like myself is that the characterization of many recurring characters in this era is... inconsistent. The only clearly defined arc I can identify at this stage is William Hartnell's as the Doctor, evolving over the course of the seasons. Origins and motivations for many of the companions remain murky, and the serialized format and seemingly lax script editing don't offer much room for recurring character beats. This doesn't make things like the Companion Chronicles for the black-and-white era a better version of the show, far from it, but it does make for a different version of the show, one which offers its own kind of might-have-been. In other words, a new relative dimension.

I'll start off on this particular character exploration by saying that no matter the fact that her time on the show was brief, I've loved Sara Kingdom. She's very different to any of the other companions prior to this point in the program, a professional killer who's even tried to kill the Doctor. Although she doesn't get much room to breathe as a character during The Daleks' Master Plan, I think Jean Marsh still does fantastic work in making Sara an engaging addition to the team. I'm really pleased that she's returned for so many audios, and these three in particular. When given something with more gravitas to act with, she settles back into a role she'd left more than 40 years before with surprising ease. Finally getting a look into the stoic Space Security officer's head is certainly a treat, and it's to Marsh's credit that it's done so convincingly.

The drowned world where the framing scenes for these three stories takes place is illustrated in a minimalist but rather compelling way. Small details slipped about the world being covered in water, about the regression of humanity's technology, about the Daleks living on as a monster story of sorts, and Robert's passing remark calling men in their 60s "very old", all give a good idea of what this world is like without needing to spend much time focusing on it. The pandemic that springs up in the second part of the trilogy hit close to home right now, for obvious reasons... I was amazed how much more I connected with Robert's anxiety over his daughter's illness than I did the first time that I listened to this.

Within this setting as a framework, Sara regales the officer, Robert, with three stories from her time traveling with the Doctor and Steven Taylor. Her first involves her visit to this very house on Ely, ending with the maybe not-so-shocking revelation that we're not speaking with the original Sara Kingdom, but an imprint of her left upon the psychic building. The real Sara left with the Doctor and died on Kembel, while a piece of her was left here and grew old, never knowing what happened to the "real" her. Robert immediately raises the question that Sara has already seemed to ask herself, whether she's really Sara or just a memory, a ghost in all but name. Even though she clearly still thinks and acts human, feels the happiness and pain from her time before coming to the house, she doesn't wish that for herself, almost doesn't want to be real, as if it makes suppressing the hurt she still feels over killing Bret easier. She can't even say that she did it outright until the last part of the trilogy.

If one quality of Sara from the televised serial is highlighted throughout this trio of audios, it's her selflessness. Sara made an oath as an officer to protect the innocent; Sara surrendered an imprint of her own mind, her self, her most precious thing, to the house to save her friends; Sara gave herself up to the Silver Sea in order to keep it from swallowing up the miners; Sara, ultimately, gave her very life for the Doctor, on a forgotten planet far, far away. And now she lives her eternal life granting every wish of each passing traveler. She tells us that the House wishes nothing for itself, but as Robert admonishes in the final part, "We both know that's not true." Selflessness is all well and good, but you should never give and give and give away until there's nothing of you left. You can't live only for others, but never for yourself. It's okay to want and need things, it's okay to have that weakness because all of us do. And it's only once Sara realizes this that she finds her escape at the end of this story.

Sara is trapped in what she calls "the machine", a vicious cycle of guilt, blame, and bad decisions. She almost breaks in the third part when she realizes, that by breaking the Great Clock and speaking with her brother in her personal past before she killed him, she has set into motion the events of The Daleks' Master Plan and her own eventual murder of Bret. The realization that she can't change the past absolutely crushes her. But nobody can change the past, they can only grow from it, something which Sara seems to come to terms with by the end of the story.

So, to the question of whether this Sara is the same Sara, the answer is yes and no. The Doctor will tell us far in the future that "A man is the sum of his memories," and the same experiences, the same pain, are stuck with Sara throughout this trilogy. But can Sara the character written by Simon Guerrier, and Sara the character written by Nation and Spooner in the 1960s, really be the same when they are separated by author, and by five decades?

Can the Doctor who lands outside the house on Ely at the end of the story really be the same man Sara knew, when his face has changed?

Can the Doctor in any future part of the series really be the same character as the one who departed Totter's Lane in 1963?

Can the Doctor Who of today really be the same program it was in 1966, long after the original cast and crew have all been replaced a dozen times over?

The answer is still, yes and no. The soul is there, even if the continuity is not. That soul, that constant strand of DNA, makes all of these things the same to us in their essence, even if the particulars have all been changed out like the parts of the ship of Theseus.

Call it a ghost, if you like. I'd prefer calling it my favorite TV series.

The Sontarans is next.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 9 April 2020.)

Cities Made of Song, 1965

Turn! Turn! Turn! by the Byrds

"To everything (turn, turn, turn) / There is a season (turn, turn, turn) / And a time to every purpose, under heaven.​"

1965 was a hell of a year for music. I was challenged in picking just one to highlight for this year's installment thanks to the competition. Dylan put out Like a Rolling Stone this year, and two of my absolute favorite jazz albums, A Love Supreme by John Coltrane and Free for All by Art Blakey, both dropped. Of course, my guilty pleasure, the Beatles, put out their absolute best in 1965 with the album Rubber Soul, which contained a number of stone cold classics that could have competed for the honor. At the end of the day, however, I leaned once again toward a song that could connect back with the material I'm marathoning: Turn! Turn! Turn! by the Byrds.

In researching this post, I was surprised to learn that Pete Seeger, whom I've always admired, was the original writer of this song. (Though one could always argue the actual lyricist was King Solomon.) Seeger was really ahead of his time in writing this. If you'd told me that Gene Clark had written it the day before it was recorded in 1965, I probably would have believed you. It's perfectly suited for the emerging counterculture of the time, which may explain why it got its second life as one of the year's top pop hits. This really isn't miles away from psychedelic rock, too, broadcasting the trend that was about to overtake the musical landscape over the next year. It's a lovely, gentle song... and very catchy, too. I've cursed myself to have it stuck in my head all week at this point.

Seeger was a pacifist, of course, but I was surprised to learn that Terry Nation was, too. Looking back, I was far too hard on him when I reviewed The Daleks back in 2017. The way Ian riled the Thals up to fight in the later parts of that serial stuck in my craw a bit, but I discovered recently that Nation didn't like it, either. In an interview in 1966, he admitted that he wrote in Ian's lines for that scene out of necessity and felt conflicted over doing so. "It was against all my beliefs – but I made him say it. There were lots of 'turn the other cheek' letters from viewers, but it is a problem that we all have to face. I don't have the answer."

Though I've had a giggle or two at the recurring idiosyncrasies in his work, I've grown to appreciate Nation's work a lot more in viewing his early Dalek serials. He admits in the same interview that he was just in it to write fun adventure stories and didn't excel at "sociological drama", which is totally understandable. He still turned in dozens of episodes for the show, most of which I've really liked so far. If I want sociological drama, I'll try Paul Cornell or Steven Moffat. Every other day, I'll happily settle for this.

I don't know if it's to Nation's credit or to Dennis Spooner's that the story I'm currently taking an intermission from ends with a very firm pronouncement on the wastefulness of death and war, but either way, I find myself admiring Nation more than I did when I started three years ago.

Pacifism as a topic is going to turn up again and again throughout this marathon. The Doctor is the rare sort of protagonist for an adventure series who tries to solve problems through smarts rather than through violence, and I'm personally inclined to prefer that. We'll track this question through the decades, but for now, I'll let it rest by the wayside and just rock out.

"A time for love, a time for hate / A time for peace, I swear it's not too late."

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 8 April 2020.)

The Daleks' Master Plan, episodes 1 - 7 [Doctor Who, Story 21, Part 1]

The Daleks' Master Plan, episodes 1 - 7, by Terry Nation & Dennis Spooner

13 November - 25 December 1965

​At the start of my marathon, I went sequentially between the episodes making up a serial and did a sort of play-by-play of my reactions. After a little while, I gave up on this, finding that it felt a little "paint by the numbers" and gave me little room to get creative. For this story, I feel I have to make an exception by going in a more strict chronological order. I mentioned before how it's not even like a serial, it's more a season in its own right, packed with mini-stories, like The Keys of Marinus or The Chase, but on a far grander scale. (And no, I'm sure the author at the helm is not a coincidence.)

I wonder if viewers at the time were a little surprised when that Dalek story from before returned after a few weeks of Ancient Troy? It's a unique happenstance during the Classic series, and my first feeling going into this serial is that something is terribly wrong with Doctor Who. We've never seen a companion injured like Steven has been, and all around there is a desperate sort of air as the TARDIS arrives on Kembel.

(An aside: How odd is it that the Doctor doesn't just have medicine in the TARDIS? After getting into so many scrapes alongside his companions so far, you'd think he would have learned. All I can think of were the anti-radiation gloves drugs from The Daleks. Maybe that's all he had? It beggars belief.)

My immediate reaction to the most recent addition of the crew is how out of her depth she feels. Adrienne Hill injects about as much life as she can into a pretty bare character prompt. Katarina is a woman out of time, and she seems to have just been jettisoned (cough, cough) into the wrong television show. Still, I appreciate how throughout these first few episodes, William Hartnell does his very best to seed in some very plausible affection between the Doctor and his new companion. It makes what comes next all the more nasty.

But before that, we meet Bret Vyon, our direct link to the story of Mission to the Unknown, as he is busy searching for the missing Marc Cory. And oh, how my heart stopped to hear his voice. That's the Brig! But, no. He's not the Brigadier, not yet. This character is a very different man, ruthless, willing to lie to achieve his goals, and certainly no friend of the Doctor's. No matter all that, the sound of a familiar voice appearing unbidden in the blurry depths of an episode long lost brought a smile to my face. It's nice to meet you, Nicholas Courtney.

Bret gets a good characterizing moment early on, when reacting to Katarina's suspicion at his offer of antitoxic tablets to improve Steven's condition. Exasperated, he retorts, "I hate to see anyone die through stupidity." Though he's all business and absolutely focused on his goal, this is still a man who does what he thinks to be right. It's very humanizing.

After briefly watching him wearing his mask of false bonhomie for a televised interview in the first episode, we are introduced to the real Mavic Chen when he greets Zephon in the Dalek base. He positively radiates smugness, as if knowing something everyone around him does not. One gets the sense that this man is playing a hundred different games, all at the same time, and it makes him feel very important. From the reactions of those watching his interview, we know that the Solar System has its share of cynics, but by and large the people seem to be under his spell. It's terrifying knowing what he's plotting while they go trusting him to their deaths.

I give Terry Nation a bit of stick for his more idiosyncratic writing choices, but he does seem to have had a genuine hate and fear of authoritarianism, and I read Mavic Chen as an explicit condemnation of self-serving politicians. The Daleks have him pegged almost right away, saying "His ambitions exceed his usefulness." Kevin Stoney brings that to life magnificently. I do still wish the yellowface hadn't been done. I accept its presence as an unfortunate fact of British television of this period, but it does still make me uncomfortable every time Chen is on screen.

Meanwhile, with the TARDIS imperiled by the Daleks and their pyro-flames (very cool imagery, that, by the way) Katarina and Bret flee the machine with a recovering Steven, and run into the Doctor. Bret's very keen to get lost, but the Doctor has an absolutely great moment shouting him down. "Now will you shut up! Sir?" It put the biggest grin on my face. And later, when Bret calls him a very brave man, he totally waves it off. It would be unimaginable during An Unearthly Child that the Doctor would be the one insisting that the evil before them must be fought. Hartnell really has come leaps and bounds with the character by this point. He receives far too little credit for making the Doctor into the character they are today.

His Doctor also gets another chance to wear a disguise, infiltrating the meeting of the evil masterminds while disguised as one of the delegates, then nabbing the core of the Time Destructor and running when the alarm is tripped. This is also the sort of thing that will become commonplace in the Doctor's playbook, but I'm struggling to remember an instance of it before this point. Well, there was The Reign of Terror, and that bit was pretty fun, too. I'm glad to see it done again.

At the start of the next episode, we get a little foreshadowing of Chen's fate when Zephon is exterminated for his incompetence. Chen still doesn't seem to take it to heart and continues along as he did before, seemingly sure of his invincibility. With the suspicion put forward that the core's thieves were Earthlings, he takes responsibility for heading back to Earth to use his resources there to track them down. The sheer cheek he has, BSing the Daleks. You have to admire it. The Daleks, meanwhile, bring Chen's stolen ship, piloted by our heroes, down onto the aptly named Desperus, which looks a lot like the jungle we were just in. The parts of the episode we spend on Desperus lack somewhat in incident, at least until the cliffhanger. Katarina is in peril, being held hostage by a desperate man. But we've been through this drill a million times, haven't we? Surely she will find a way out?

Well... no. Shockingly, we're made to watch at the start of the next episode as Katarina, possibly not even knowing what she's doing, hits the airlock's release and ejects herself and her captor into space to die. This is dark. Like, really dark. The Doctor and Steven are stunned, too, and the Doctor gives a fitting eulogy, but it's all over far too quickly. I'm left with a sense of unease, wondering about the implications of Katarina's sudden arrival and even more sudden departure, but the message is clear: no one is safe anymore. Who's next? Bret? Steven? Maybe even the Doctor?

Unbeknownst to them, by the time that they arrive at Earth, their situation has already been complicated by Chen discovering Bret's involvement and dispatching an apparently highly skilled and effective agent to kill the three on sight. It's all too real when Chen says, after she's gone, that "A heroic war cry to apparently peaceful ends is one of the greatest weapons a politician has." Life, it seems, is cheap in these games politicians play, or at the very least in this serial, as another man (ostensibly an ally at first) is shot dead by Bret upon the heroes' arrival at a lab facility. Not long after, the agent sent by Chen, Sara Kingdom, guns down a shocked Bret while the Doctor and Steven run for their lives. When she tells her comrade to aim for their heads, it's easy to think that either of our heroes could be next on the chopping block, when divorced from all future knowledge.

When Sara tries to pursue, of course, she's caught up in a scientific experiment and thrown across the galaxy to a swamp planet called Mira (groan) along with the Doctor and Steven. Though not the most thrilling of planets design-wise, the invisible creatures living there are done convincingly. I'm glad this episode in particular is still intact so that we can see the footprints being made in the mud and the other effects surrounding the Visians. Sara seems quick to surrender to pragmatism in the face of adversity, agreeing to work with the Doctor for the time being. Her unwillingness to believe their story is understandable, as is her distress over killing Bret, who we learn to have been her brother. The story doesn't get much time to reflect on the human toll of this latest murder, since Sara is back in the cave sharpish as the invisible creatures on the prowl again. As are the Daleks, who soon turn up on the planet to corner the three. When the Doctor turns to the camera and says "I'm afraid, my friends, the Daleks have won," we almost believe it. Nothing seems to have gone right all throughout this serial, and the Daleks seem far more dangerous than they ever have before. The almost comic portrayal of them from The Chase is a distant memory at this point.

Still, it's a mercy the Daleks of this period seem more inclined to take prisoners. When they try to reel in the three, the Doctor manages to instigate what I'm pretty sure is the first "MY VISION IS IMPAIRED" moment in the series by smearing some mud on the lens of the Dalek taking them captive, and they split for the Daleks' pursuit craft. This leads to an amusing scene where Mavic Chen and the Black Dalek bicker over their mutual failure to capture the Doctor and his friends up to this point. I had a good chortle when the Black Dalek observed of Chen, "You make your incompetence sound like an achievement." Politics, everyone!

Eventually, of course, they are actually captured - lest we forget that this is Doctor Who - and the Doctor manages to bluff his way into providing Chen with a fake Time Destructor core before splitting back to his TARDIS with Steven and Sara in tow.

This half of the serial is capped off by the ever curious Feast of Steven, which seems to garner mixed reactions from most corners... An inconsequential runaround, for sure, but it was Christmas after all. Couldn't very well have more senseless killing going on while everyone's about to sit down for a turkey dinner. There are a lot of great moments in this episode, such as when the Doctor refers to himself as "A citizen of the universe, and a gentleman to boot," which I think is a great encapsulation of the character. I'm even a little charmed by the breaking of the fourth wall at the end, if I'm being honest. It's an utterly bizarre way to leave off on The Daleks' Master Plan for now, just another curious change of tone in what is becoming a long series of the like.

So far, I'm captivated, and I'm eager to see how the end of this serial is realized on the screen. With the cynical and gloomy atmosphere of it all, though, Feast of Steven is at least a nice palate cleanser. Maybe a musical interlude will help, too? Our 1965 musical pick is coming next, and after that, a brief look at a trilogy of Sara Kingdom audios from Big Finish.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 5 April 2020.)

The Myth Makers [Doctor Who, Story 20]

The Myth Makers by Donald Cotton

16 October - 6 November 1965

​

Talk about whiplash. From the unremitting grimness of Kembel's jungles to this, I'm most certainly thrown through a loop. I have to imagine contemporary viewers might have scratched their heads at this, too. Where did the Daleks go? It goes without saying, for anyone who has seen it, that The Myth Makers justifies its own existence very quickly. After the first few scenes of a japing Achilles and Hector battling while a bemused TARDIS crew looks on, I glanced over at the credits on the Wiki, sure that this was a Dennis Spooner serial, only to find it was a newcomer at the helm, Donald Cotton. This story truly is reminiscent of The Romans in tone as well as setting, and (dare I say) is the even better of the two.

While in The Romans we met characters (read: pastiches) based on archetypes seen in Roman dramas of the period, our guest cast for The Myth Makers are all already known to us, personages from the works of Homer, and so instead of comic exaggerations we're treated to funny twists on the characters. Odysseus as the ruthless bully, Cassandra as the paranoid priestess, Paris as the whingeing princeling... Each and every one of them is sketched beautifully, and anyone passingly familiar with the source material will spot (and appreciate) that upon viewing.

These characters, and their interactions and feuds with one another, drive a number of humorous scenes where the main cast don't even need to be present, though when they are, it adds another dimension to the story, forcing Homer's characters briefly out of the narrative they're living in. You can tell Hartnell, O'Brien and Purves were all having a lot of fun with it, too. Hartnell always seems to shine in historical stories. I recall that he had trouble engaging with the technobabble that was fed to him for more scifi oriented serials and that he once named The Reign of Terror as his favorite.

Speaking of the main actors, though, we have to talk about Vicki's goodbye. It's easy to draw a parallel with Susan's departure a season before, when Vicki departs the TARDIS team to stay with Troilus in the 2nd millennium BCE. I will say that although Vicki seemed to cotton onto Troilus before I even knew he was in the story, some due care is given to sketch their relationship over the succeeding episodes. It is sudden, but it isn't all bad, and her leaving to found Rome with Troilus and Aeneas is a fun detail when considering her first adventure with the Doctor was The Romans. But the fact that her sudden departure was a result of off-camera drama resulting from friction with new producer John Wiles leaves a bitter taste, one made bittersweet by the fact that it's lovely Vicki we're saying goodbye to. I took a little time to warm up to her fully, such that I was almost shocked when I realized just how very sorry I was that she was leaving. She was such a fun and charming companion; I'll miss her terribly.

The serial comes dangerously close to coming off the rails in the last episode, but doesn't entirely. The hard left turn from comedy to tragedy is a startling one, but one that just about works. I knew going in, but I was still shocked and fascinated by the tone shift. The sack of Troy is almost served better by not being in motion; the viewer's imagination is forced to run wild thinking of what the cunning Greeks are doing to this charming, orderly city where we were joking around the episode before. No one's laughing when Odysseus and his men haul Cassandra away, or when Steven is seemingly mortally wounded. It makes the first three episodes stand out in contrast, and prepares us for what's to come, in a way.

To put a bow on it, The Myth Makers is a surprising and quite wonderful addition to Doctor Who, and certainly one of the best serials we've seen so far. Though I say bow, it's too late to say woe to The Daleks' Master Plan, the first seven episodes of which I will cover next.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 31 March 2020.)

A Word on Verity Lambert

A Word on Verity Lambert

​

Before moving on to The Myth Makers, I'd like to spend a moment reflecting on Verity Lambert's tenure as producer for Doctor Who. Every so often, when someone who has left an indelible mark on the program departs, I'll pause at that spot in the marathon to make one of these posts.

Aside from the actors and actresses who have played the Doctor, it's impossible to think of somebody who has left a deeper impression on Doctor Who than Verity. As she was the steward of the show through its first two years, everything I loved about those two years can ultimately be regarded as her responsibility. I'm not well-versed in the production history of this era beyond what I've seen dramatized, but I know based on her time, her place, and her level of accomplishment, Verity must have been a real badass to make it in the BBC "boys' club", and not just that, but make something truly special in the process. The fairly even quality of the show across Seasons One and Two (bar a handful of aberrations) attests to the work of somebody with a fine eye for detail and a clear vision of what Doctor Who had to be.

Verity Lambert's Doctor Who celebrates the joy of discovery, and it pours out of almost every episode, no matter whether that episode happens to be a successful one or not. She and her production team put an immense deal of care into what could have just been another Tuesday job for them, another 25 minutes to put out the next Saturday, but never in all 18 of the stories that I've watched so far have I felt that due effort wasn't given. I sense that the show has, at this point, lost someone very special, so it's with excitement (but trepidation) that I enter what comes next.

John Wiles, ball's in your court.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 31 March 2020.)

Mission to the Unknown [Doctor Who, Story 19]

Mission to the Unknown by Terry Nation

9 October 1965

​
What can I say to inaugurate such a prodigious set of episodes as this? Thirteen episodes of television is a hell of a lot to wrap one's head around. I almost feel it's more appropriate to treat The Daleks' Master Plan, and all its attendant hangers-on, as a season unto itself. My first thought entering it before starting this episode, is that the notion of them successfully stretching the idea across the entire span of those thirteen episodes seems fanciful at best. The Chase couldn't even really do it across six, and isn't this just a grittier version of that, writ large?

If there are cracks in this edifice, then I can't see them from this low vantage. Mission to the Unknown is a fairly able episode to start off with, and I reminded myself while watching that this was never intended to be a standalone, and that the only thing keeping it from being The Daleks' Master Plan Episode 0 is that it's separated from it by a different serial in between. So simply on its merits as a part of a larger serial, it holds up alright and stands as a good teaser to the larger story to come. Edward de Souza does good as Marc Cory (licensed to kill) in the lieu of one of our regulars or the titular frontman, though understandably he gets only about twenty minutes to be characterized. You can't begrudge the work he does, though, and his sheer desperation to get the message off Kembel is sold quite well.

The Varga plants are absolute nightmare fuel, the idea of having your body taken over by a plant reminding one of those fungi or worms that infest certain slugs and other creepy-crawlies. The idea of it happening to a person is stomach turning, so it's small wonder that it's undersold in this episode. Having read the novelization of The Daleks' Master Plan from the 1980s about a year and a half ago (it includes this episode as part of its inaugural section), it was a small letdown from that author's rather visceral descriptions of the creatures, though the imagination still runs wild... Even the jungle of Kembel sounds hostile, with the cacophony of alien noises filling the air in it setting me on edge while the surviving astronauts were stalked by Vargas and Daleks.

Also noteworthy is the assembly of hostile aliens we see in the Dalek city. It occurs to me that we've never seen such a motley assortment of different kinds of alien on the show in one place. It does a good job of selling the scale of the universe (even if Terry Nation occasionally seeming to mix up star systems and galaxies does not), and we are grounded of course by the sight of the Union Flag on the humans' spaceship, which is a nice touch.

All in all, an intriguing start, but we will see whether the legend outstrips the actual serial once we get into the meat of The Daleks' Master Plan soon. But first, speaking of legends, The Myth Makers.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 30 March 2020.)

Galaxy 4 [Doctor Who, Story 18]

Galaxy 4 by William Emms

11 September - 2 October 1965

​
After the north of England, we find ourselves far away on an apparently dying world. Curiously enough, this world isn't even in Galaxy 4 (Galaxy Four? I see this is a point of contention) as that is just the point of origin for our Drahvin antagonists. Why didn't the catalogers/anoraks/whoever just call this serial The Drahvins or something? Most odd. What's also odd is that this is the only story so far which I've gone into without retaining any knowledge of fan opinion whatsoever. I have to say, I sort of understand why. Galaxy 4 is not a bad story by any measure, but it is strangely lacking in incident of any kind. Aside from a few fun set pieces it chiefly just plods along at a leisurely pace for the course of its four episodes.

I'm pretty sure at least that the core "twist" that the Drahvins are the baddies is not actually meant to be a twist as such, but without that central narrative tension all that really drives the story forward is the imminent disintegration of the planet they're stood on. This isn't so bad, but does leave us with only the occasional moment of action or dialog while that eventuality draws closer. This is yet another case of a story which I think would be significantly improved by having it all still in the archives. The surviving clip from the first episode, and of course the recently recovered Air Lock, show that there's a lot going on with Stephanie Bidmead's performance as the villainous Maaga in particular. The moment when she describes watching the deaths of the Rill and the TARDIS team with such delicious relish in our single surviving episode is easily the serial's best, and suggests that it would be at least a bit more visually arresting if we could see the rest of her performance in motion.

The Rills are a bit monotone, but look interesting, and the Chumblies are of course adorable. Steven gets a pair of really great moments, once while trying to change the mind of a Drahvin drone, and the other while grilling the Rill in the last episode, showing his cynical side. Otherwise he's on the sidelines here, forced to as a result of last-minute writing changes, which is a pity. Vicki is great as well ("I observed, collated, concluded, and then I threw a rock!") and the Doctor at least seems to be having fun.

Overall, I'd say it wasn't a waste of time, but I certainly hope Mission to the Unknown is a little more of a rousing watch.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 26 March 2020.)