1-8. The Macros.

2 episodes. Approx. 113 minutes. Written by: Ingrid Pitt, Tony Rudlin. Directed by: John Ainsworth. Produced by: David Richardson.

THE PLOT

The Doctor and Peri find themselves on the U. S. S. Eldridge, the destroyer that according to urban myth was involved in the 1943 Philadelphia Experiment, an attempt by the U. S. Navy to render a ship invisible. The Eldridge on which the time travelers have found themselves is stuck between dimensions. Crew members appear to exist in time loops, repeating the seconds before the experiment was initiated... the seconds before their deaths. The ship itself is covered in a greenish rust that has destabilized the ship's structure, to the point at which the deck itself will crumple beneath the weight of anyone walking on it.

Professor Tessler (Vincent Pirillo), the mind behind the experiment, managed to survive. He tells the Doctor that they have tried to increase power to yank themselves back to their own dimension, but that the power keeps draining away. Using the TARDIS' instruments, the power drain is traced to the micro dimension of Capron, ruled over by the despotic Queen Osloo (Linda Marlowe). Materializing on Capron in hopes of stopping the power drain, the Doctor instead attracts the queen's attention - and wakes her to the possibility of expanding her reign by using the TARDIS to conquer Earth!

CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Unusually passive in this story. He spends most of his time reacting to situations, rather than acting upon them. When he's thrown into a Capron prison cell in Episode One, he doesn't escape - he just happens to be the cellmate of Ezz (Jack Galagher), Osloo's stepson and chief rival. When Ezz is rescued, the Doctor gets to tag along. He does make a proactive effort to halt the Philadelphia Experiment - but his attempt is a very weak one, and that he seems to honestly expect it to succeed seems laughable. He spends most of the second episode ferrying Osloo around in his TARDIS while a gun is pointed at his head, and his defeat of her literally comes down to pressing (or not pressing) a button on the console.

Peri: In a candid moment, Peri admits to enjoying her travels with the Doctor. Despite her friction with this latest incarnation, she describes him not merely as a good man but "the best," and insists that for all the danger involved, this is the most exciting time of her life. "I sometimes think that I'll still be traveling with him when I am old and grey," she confesses to Yka (Rachael Elizabeth), a rebel against Osloo's rule. She adds that "one lifetime just isn't enough to see the whole universe!"

THOUGHTS

After her guest starring role in Warriors from the Deep, actress Ingrid Pitt and her partner, Tony Rudlin, made multiple story pitches to the Doctor Who production office. The Macros was the only pitch accepted, likely because of the potential in its concept. The notion of a Who serial dealing with the Philadelphia Experiment is an intriguing one, as is the idea of having both the Doctor and the Eldridge survivors stuck between dimensions.

The opening twenty minutes is quite good, raising hopes for the rest of the serial. There are shades of Sapphire & Steel in the Doctor and Peri's exploration of the ship, as they search through fog so thick they can barely see, witnessing the past actions of the crew while being blocked from interacting with them.

Then the narrative shifts to Capron, and it becomes bad "B" movie fodder. It's very likely Pitt created Osloo as a role for herself, and guest star Linda Marlowe's hammy performance in this over-the-top role is likely just an accent away from the performance Pitt would have given. The character is a distaff Ming the Mericiless, exiling all political enemies to energy mines to slowly die from radiation poisoning. Too bad the cheese on hand lacks the contagious fun of Flash Gordon - either the old serials or the 1980 movie.

Plotting is sloppy, with the Doctor and Peri getting captured repeatedly largely through their own stupidity. At one point in Episode Two, the Doctor more or less allows Osloo to gain control of the TARDIS by opening the doors right in front of her and her soldiers, then taking an incredibly long time to close them again. The structure is bizarre: The Doctor and Peri travel to Capron to pick up a couple of guest stars who then do virtually nothing for the rest of the story. Then they forget about Capron for a bit and travel to Earth, in a bizarrely halfhearted attempt to stop the experiment from ever happening. Then they decide it's time to go to Capron again to spark the showdown with the villain.

Surely the attempt to pre-empt the experiment should have come first, with all the Capron material being allowed to flow together as an unbroken block? Alternatively, the Doctor can't attempt to stop the experiment due to the Web of Time (TM), thus sparing the plot a rather pointless 15-minute side trip. As it stands, the story with Osloo comes to a halt for the first third of Episode Two, then abruptly re-starts itself.

The Macros still isn't anywhere near as bad as Mission to Magnus. The opening Act hooks listener attention very strongly. Even when it too rapidly deteriorates into cheesy "B" movie material, the first episode at least remains fast-paced and engaging. The second episode is much worse, the story's structural awkwardness disrupting the pace and the cheese becoming tedious rather than fun after Osloo takes over the TARDIS. Mix in an unusually passive Doctor, a weakly-characterized guest cast, and a silly (overly easy) ending, and it's extremely clear why this was rejected.

Overall Rating: 3/10.

Previous Story: The Song of Megaptera

Previous Television Story: Revelation of the Daleks
Next Television Story: Trial of a Timelord - The Mysterious Planet (not yet reviewed)

Search Amazon.com for Doctor Who

6th Doctor Audio Review Index

6th Doctor Television Review Index


Doctor Who: The Lost Stories Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

1-7. The Song of Megaptera.

4 episodes. Approx. 109 minutes. Written by: Pat Mills. Directed by: John Ainsworth. Produced by: David Richardson.

THE PLOT

The TARDIS is drawn by the song of a space whale, a creature that swims through time and space much as earth whales swim through the ocean. This particular whale is being hunted by a factory ship, a mile-long edifice devoted to catching these creatures and killing them, earning a bonus from the company for every whale destroyed.

When the ship catches the whale in a tractor beam, the Doctor steers the TARDIS straight in - freeing the whale, but resulting in the TARDIS being dragged into the factory ship's "termination bay" instead. He is brought to Captain Greeg (John Benfield), the resentful head of a very motley crew.  Greeg hates the Doctor on sight, despising him as much for his educated manner as for costing him his kill. He lets the Doctor know that his actions have merely delayed the inevitable, as the ship is already closing on the whale's new position.

But the factory ship has another visitor: A fungus-like "Caller" (John Banks), hunting the whale for its own purposes. And inside the whale is a colony of human castaways, worshiping the creature and naming it "Megaptera." If either Greeg or the Caller succeed in their plans, then these castaways will be as doomed as the whale itself!

CHARACTERS

The Doctor: When he and Peri first see the space whale being hunted by the factory ship, it takes almost no convincing on Peri's part for him to intervene. He continues interfering with Greeg's whale hunt at every turn, sabotaging the computer to make it into the ultimate peace-nik (hilariously followed by the computer overcompensating and assuming the personality of a psychotic gamer), then using the TARDIS to act as a decoy while the whale dives into the time vortex. He remains highly protective of Peri, and when she is in jeopardy in Part Two he runs to her side and insists on treating her himself rather than let the "Auto-Doc" amputate her arm.

Peri: Gets an amusing scene in which she is rendered delirious and in short sequence: fails to recognize the Doctor because she is picturing the Fifth Doctor; complains about the Sixth Doctor's dress sense; muses about how wonderful it is that she's turning into a plant; wonders about having a Dalek as a pet; and demonstrates her American-ness by singing the Star Spangled Banner (badly). The Sixth Doctor's personality also seems to have rubbed off on her a bit, as she responds to his statement about "a slight impact" after a torpedo hits the TARDIS by repeating "a slight impact," in a steadily rising voice - much as he often does. Outside of these moments, most of the material here is generic companion stuff, likely a side effect of this story having been previously developed for entirely different Doctor/companion teams.

THOUGHTS

The Song of Megaptera had probably the longest development process of any of the Lost Stories. It was originally submitted as Song of the Space Whale in 1980, envisioned as a Fourth Doctor story. It was commissioned for full scripts for Season 20, drafted as the introduction for new companion Turlough, only to be pushed back due to writer Pat Mills' disagreements with Eric Saward over the working class character dialogue written for the captain and castaways (Saward evidently wanted the captain to be a "Star Trek-type figure"). The script was revamped one more time for the Sixth Doctor and Peri before finally being dropped altogether.

In its audio form, the serial is a fun piece with some big, over-the-top visuals and some enjoyably insane ideas. Larger-than-life imagery greets us right from the start, as a mile-long factory ship hunts an equally enormous space whale. The factory ship's interior is almost like the inside of a dying beast itself: rust cakes the walls, decay is everywhere. The end of Part One even sees Peri falling into the bowels of the ship, where she encounters a fungus-like alien Caller (John Banks) that lurks within those depths almost like a parasite.

The second half keeps throwing big visuals and weird ideas at us. The Doctor and Peri go into the whale itself. There, they encounter "The Framily," a large group of castaways changed by the whale's time radiation into an insane cult worshiping "Megaptera."  Meanwhile, the factory ship continues its hunt, Captain Greeg (just one letter removed from "greed")'s obsession with catching this space beast and earning a huge bonus allowing guest star John Benfield to give a proper, scenery-chomping turn; for what whale hunt story would be complete without its Ahab?

It's easy to see how these visuals and concepts would have appealed to commissioning script editor Christopher H. Bidmead, whose season as script editor and whose subsequent scripts always showed a fondness for the big and bizarre. Meanwhile, the fast pace and the mercenary motives of the factory ship crew doubtless held enough appeal to new script editor Eric Saward to keep him toying with it for quite a while before officially dropping it. There's little question this would have been a fun television outing, whose main challenge (as the liner notes observe) would have been the realization of the space whale itself.

Big Finish's production standards are in top form bringing this to life. Daniel Brett's music and sound design evoke just the right atmosphere for the whale in space even before the story truly gets underway. In the second half, there's a noticeable divide between the harsh, mechanical flight deck of the factory ship and the organic caverns of Megaptera. Scene transitions are seamless, and even an action scene in Part Three that sees the TARDIS fleeing from a torpedo is tightly structured and easy to picture in the mind's eye.

In Season 20, this ended up being replaced by Mawdryn Undead; in Season 22, by Vengeance on Varos. That makes it hard for me to argue that this was a missed opportunity, as I genuinely prefer both of those stories over this one. Still, this is a brisk, imaginative serial, and I found it a lot of fun to listen to.

Overall Rating: 7/10.

Previous Story: Point of Entry
Next Story: The Macros

Previous Television Story: Revelation of the Daleks
Next Television Story: Trial of a Timelord - The Mysterious Planet (not yet reviewed)

Search Amazon.com for Doctor Who

6th Doctor Audio Review Index

6th Doctor Television Review Index


Doctor Who: The Lost Stories Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

1-6. Point of Entry.

2 episodes. Approx. 126 minutes. Written by: Barbara Clegg, Marc Platt. Directed by: John Ainsworth. Produced by: David Richardson.


THE PLOT

The TARDIS is drawn to 16th Century England. Queen Elizabeth I sits on the throne, and her advisor, Sir Francis Walsingham (Ian Brooker) delights in England's rising influence even as he employs spies to thwart any threats to that influence. But those threats are closer to home than he realizes...

Playwright Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (Matt Addis) has struck a deal with the devil: A sinister Spaniard named Velez (Luis Soto). Marlowe is struggling to convey the darkness needed to bring life to his play, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. Velez tantalizes him with the promise of black magic and forbidden knowledge, all his if he can help Velez to recover an artifact of the Aztecs: a stone blade, the match for a stone hilt already in his possession. A blade now making its way to England in the hold of a privateer.

Marlowe eagerly agrees, not realizing the true source of Velez's powers. The Spaniard is working with the alien Omnim, who plan to restore themselves to power by recreating the Aztec sacrifices in Elizabethan England. And their planned victims include Queen Elizabeth Herself!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Colin Baker gets some fun scenes as the Doctor makes deals with first Walsingham (Ian Brooker), and then with the Omnim. He fully intends to keep his bargains, but both of the devils with whom he deals have other plans. His strong moral sense is on display when he and Peri find "Mad Jack" (Alex Mallinson) in the stocks. He is grim about how such treatment was hardly reserved for criminals in this time period, and is determined to release the man even before realizing that his tongue has been removed. He is protective of Peri, and blames himself when she is captured by Velez during his absence.

Peri: Just as the Doctor is protective of her, she is protective of Jack. We can hear her tending to him in the background as the Doctor talks with Marlowe and Marlowe's friend, Tom (Tom Williams), in the foreground. When Jack is captured by Velez, Peri puts herself in harm's way to try to free him. Throughout the story, we see that she has faith in the Doctor to know what to do. The first episode sees her continually urging other characters to "wait for the Doctor" before acting. On the lighter side, Peri gets a rather amusing bit in Part Two, impersonating Queen Elizabeth as part of a ploy to recover the stone dagger. When she encounters a mob of frightened townspeople, she employs that ruse again in deadly earnest - and, with a little help from an ally, manages to pull it off.


THOUGHTS

Point of Entry was one of several pitches writer Barbara Clegg made to the Doctor Who production office after the success of her first story, Enlightenment. Like all of those pitches, it was summarily rejected by script editor Eric Saward, who was interesting in focusing on the more purely action/adventure elements of the show.

Given that its television progress never got past the level of a basic pitch, this audio story is effectively a Marc Platt script based on Clegg's synopsis. This is no bad thing. Platt is among Big Finish's best regular writers, and his creative voice is well-suited to Clegg's ideas. Listening to this story, I find myself hoping that Big Finish might prevail on him to flesh out more of her rejected pitches.

Big Finish have always done particularly good work with historically-based stories. Having a real and known backdrop seems to lend an extra layer of atmosphere. The sound designers work to bring the filthy, ragged streets of Elizabethan England to life, and an early scene in which the Doctor and Peri walk through the streets with vendors calling to them from all sides is so well-done that you can almost smell the surroundings.

The use of Christopher Marlowe in this story is a masterstroke. Yet another layer is added by making Marlowe, at the time he is writing Doctor Faustus, into a Faust figure himself. Like Faust, Marlowe has struck a deal with the devil - Velez, who promises the dark knowledge that will bring Marlowe's play to life. There is even a moment that parallels the scene in Faustus in which Mephistophilis tries to dissuade Faust from completing his bargain. Late in Part One, Velez tries to urge Marlowe to leave his house, urging the playwright not to become damned as he is. Like Faustus, Marlowe ignores the warning, becoming ever more obsessive in his thirst for dark knowledge.

Point of Entry is a dark story, with some horrific moments and images. Velez is a corpse-like figure, rasping almost despairingly that "death shuns (him)." He feasts like a parasite on the blood of others, with a human sacrifice being portrayed at one point. He lives in a darkened house that Tom and Marlowe remark would require scores of torches to light, with a library of grimoires. He tempts Marlowe with the promise of black magic and shows him an obsidian mirror which takes them to an astral plane. Of course, the story takes pains to let us know that this isn't actual black magic but some form of alien influence... but in all plot terms, Velez is basically an evil wizard, surrounded by all the trappings, and that imagery is compelling.

As was true in Paradise 5 (and how fitting that two stories dealing with demons should follow on from each other), that which opposes evil is not necessarily good. The man most determined to stop Velez is Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's real-life "spymaster." This story's Walsingham is almost as dark a figure as Velez, who refers to him (not inaccurately) as "the queen's high priest of sacrifice." Most of his scenes show him lurking like a spider at the heart of the Tower of London. He is surrounded by implements of torture, and a metronome counts off time like a mechanical heart beating in the background. He recognizes the Doctor as somebody dangerous, and orders him brought to the Tower so that he can "learn his truths, or tear them out of him one by one."

The atmosphere, dialogue, and performances are splendid across the board, making this a ghoulish treat to listen to. Things do get a little silly at the climax, when Velez suddenly transforms into the Aztec god Quetzacoatl (only to be very easily defeated thereafter), which keeps the full piece from being quite as strong as Paradise 5 was. But if the final stretch doesn't quite come off, then it's still a terrific ride getting there.

Definitely one of the stronger Lost Stories, and yet another case in which a rejected story idea ends up making for better entertainment than the ones that were actually in pre-production!


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Previous Story: Paradise 5
Next Story: The Song of Megaptera

Previous Television Story: Revelation of the Daleks
Next Television Story: Trial of a Timelord - The Mysterious Planet (not yet reviewed)

Search Amazon.com for Doctor Who

6th Doctor Audio Review Index

6th Doctor Television Review Index


Doctor Who: The Lost Stories Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

1-5. Paradise 5.

4 episodes. Approx. 118 minutes. Written by: P. J. Hammond, Andy Lane. Directed by: Barnaby Edwards. Produced by: David Richardson.


THE PLOT

After a turbulent visit with one old friend, The Doctor decides to visit another: Professor Albrecht Thompson, an economist who lives on the ticker-tape covered world of Targos Delta. He and Peri arrive to find that the professor has been gone for months. He took a shuttle to Paradise 5, an exclusive holiday resort on a space station orbiting a gorgeous if uninhabitable volcanic world... and never returned home.

The Doctor arranges for Peri to go undercover as a hostess on Paradise 5, to gather information from the staff while he sneaks onto the station to search on his own. Both find their curiosity piqued by the "Paradise Machine," which promises the ultimate in relaxation by working directly on the human brain. But Gabriel (Alex Macqueen) and Michael (James D'Arcy), who run the station, can't help but notice Peri's many questions... And in the station's underbelly, the Doctor encounters the Cherubs, a mute slave race that write a warning to him:

"Beware the Elohim!"


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: When Peri surreptitiously delivers his meal, he savors both the fine food and the chance to show off a bit by observing that his delicious "devils on horseback" are perfectly appropriate to Paradise, given that devils are fallen angels. He spends most of the story's first half on the sidelines, exploring the station with a very relaxed manner. After a direct encounter with the wraith-like Elohim, his entire manner becomes more focused, and he becomes intent upon examining the Paradise Machine.

Peri: Unusual for a Sixth Doctor story, the Doctor spends the first half on the sidelines while Peri does most of the active investigating. This is probably because this was originally planned as the introductory story for Mel, and writer P. J. Hammond knew that the audience would need a chance to see the new character in action. Credit to Andy Lane's excellent audio adaptation: It is completely invisible that this story was originally intended for a different companion. Peri gets a particularly good scene in Episode Two, reflecting with one of the doomed vacationers about how she went from being an "A" student with enormous ambition to serving drinks in a space resort. She doesn't sound bitter as she talks about this - just aware that her life has not gone in the direction she had hoped for.


THOUGHTS

Paradise 5 was one of several submissions for The Trial of a Timelord season, for the slot that was ultimately occupied by Terror of the Vervoids. With a story by Sapphire & Steel creator P. J. Hammond, it was championed by script editor Eric Saward, but deemed unsuitable by producer John Nathan Turner. I mention this is the interests of fairness. I tend to be more sympathetic toward JNT than toward Saward, but this is one case where Saward was right and JNT was wrong. I actually do rather like Terror of the Vervoids - but this would have been a far more interesting serial, and a vastly better introduction for Mel.

Fortunately, unlike The Hollows of Time, this serial is well-suited to audio. The bulk of the action takes place in the confines of a space station. The geography of the station is easy to visualize, and the different sound designs for the guest areas "front stage" versus the employee areas "back stage" make it very clear when we've cut from one area to the other. Visually descriptive dialogue is spare, allowing the sounds and characters' reactions to draw out the listeners' imaginations. Like The Hollows of Time, it's a visual story: Wraith-like monsters haunt a space station which orbits and looks out over a violently volcanic world. Unlike The Hollows of Time, we are trusted to hold those visuals in our own minds, rather than having them described for us to the last detail.

As the title indicates, a lot of this story is meant to evoke the imagery of heaven and hell. This "Paradise" overlooks a beautiful yet violently destructive inferno, allowing those in Paradise to look down on the fires of hell. The station is run by Gabriel and Michael - angels, but who are portrayed here as sociopaths. Another guest character is a man named Winterbourne (Richard Earl), left scarred and deluded after being rejected by the Paradise Machine. He frantically tells the Doctor that he saw the "serpent" within the machine, and now he is left to wander the Purgatory of the station's underbelly, imagining himself to be constantly waiting for a promised release (an interview, in this case) which will never come.

The story is very well-paced, and each new episode reveals a little bit more about Paradise 5's true purpose. It's obvious very early on that Gabriel and Michael are up to no good, and that the Paradise Machine is the mechanism by which they commit their evil deeds. But the "how" and "why" of it are withheld, with little nuggets of information dropped at regular intervals. A particularly nasty twist involves the true nature of the Cherubs, and the tag has an effective melancholy note to it.

The relationship between the Sixth Doctor and Peri is particularly well-written here. They bicker, but we regularly see that these are two people who care about each other. Peri may snap at him right after she encounters the Elohim for the first time, but she also pauses to ask if he's all right after he's left shaken by the true nature of the Paradise Machine. He may be happy enough to push her into a situation in which she is undercover as a servant, but he comes rushing to her when she is in danger. This is actually is the characterization we saw on television - but the balance is better struck here, so that we can always see the warmth beneath the bickering.

In short, an excellent story. It would have been a fine addition to the Trial season had it been made at the time - but it's probably better in this form, freed of the limits of that season's very tight budget and even more critically freed of the intrusive "Trial" framework.


Overall Rating: 9/10.

Previous Story: The Hollows of Time
Next Story: Point of Entry

Previous Television Story: Revelation of the Daleks
Next Television Story: Trial of a Timelord - The Mysterious Planet (not yet reviewed)

Search Amazon.com for Doctor Who

6th Doctor Audio Review Index

6th Doctor Television Review Index


Doctor Who: The Lost Stories Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

1-4. The Hollows of Time.

2 episodes. Approx. 120 minutes. Written by: Christopher H. Bidmead. Directed by: John Ainsworth. Produced by: David Richardson.

THE PLOT

The Doctor takes Peri to Hollowdean, a small English village that is home to Reverend Foxwell (Trevor Littledale), an old friend the Doctor had met at Bletchley in the 1940's, working with Alan Turing among other great minds. The reverend had extended a standing invitation, which the Doctor has decided to accept in order to investigate gravitational anomalies.

The anomalies are tied to experiments Foxwell is working with another old Bletchley associate: Professor Stream (David Garfield). But something is odd about Stream: The Doctor finds him familiar, but only remembers him from Bletchley after meeting him. When he really stops to think, some of those memories seem to actually be memories of Foxwell. The experiments are also troubling, particularly when Peri and a local boy, 11-year-old Simon (voiced by Susan Sheridan), find a strange scale from the beach, one which seems to jump of its own volition.

The Doctor recognizes it as a Tractator scale, and he soon realizes that the experiments Reverend Foxwell believes are peaceful scientific advances may actually endanger all of Time and Space!

CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Though some of Christopher H. Bidmead's dialogue is overly-florid, giving the impression of a Doctor who never uses one small word when four or five large ones will suffice, Colin Baker gives another first-rate performance. One thing that can be said for Bidmead: He writes a smart Doctor, and we can see the Doctor constantly thinking and rethinking the overall situation. Professor Stream's experiments have scrambled his memories as much as Foxy's, leaving him unable to recognize a villain he should know instantly, but he remains proactive enough to lay a trap for Stream's associates.

Peri: Very protective toward young Simon. She is gentle and reassuring when walking through the Tractator tunnels with him, doing her best to keep him calm even through her own fears. Once he is safe, she turns into a strict mother figure, ordering him to bed in an attempt to get him out of danger. She is also protective toward the Doctor, following him into the Time Corridor when she believes he intends to sacrifice himself for the group.

"Professor Stream:" This story was scripted for the original Season 23 with a major role for Anthony Ainley's Master... which poses a challenge for the audio version, as it was adapted during the period when Big Finish were restricted from using the character. Had the listeners been trusted to connect the dots, with the rest simply playing out as it would have minus the word "Master," the result probably would have been fine. David Garfield is a surprisingly good vocal match for Anthony Ainley, his kindly "Stream" persona particularly effective in recalling the Portreve from Castrovalva, and his sparing use makes his scenes far more effective than most '80's Master stories. The big problem is that Bidmead gives us a seemingly endless stream of knowing winks, drawing so much attention to the non-identification of Stream that it becomes rather distracting.

THOUGHTS

My complaint about Bidmead's winks at the Master can be equally applied to most of the ways he tries to write around the limitations he's been given. The Hollows of Time is a very visual script, and adapting it to audio was always going to create issues. Bidmead attempts to deal with this by grafting on scenes of the Doctor and Peri, reflecting on their adventure after the fact. Had this device been restricted to bookends, perhaps to justify bits of narration over certain impossibly visual moments, then it would have been fine. But the second episode particularly cuts back to them far too often, breaking up the flow of the narrative while largely just adding an extra layer of confusion.

For all of that, I rather like the story. Unlike the other cancelled stories of the original Season 23, I suspect this one would have been brilliant on television. It's vintage Bidmead: Imaginative, full of high concepts and set pieces, with just the right touch of the bizarre. It's a direct sequel to Frontios, but it isn't in any way a retread. The Tractators are used in an entirely different way by this story, cleverly playing with expectations that this will turn into a monster story (something which never ends up happening).

While the translation to audio isn't ideal, I still enjoyed closing my eyes and visualizing some of the bizarre set pieces: The first episode cliffhanger, which sees the Doctor taking a flight through space/time in a dissolving Citroen; the encasements which form the central part of the Master's plan, arranged into a Stonehenge-like circle to create a forcefield; a time corridor that encompasses Foxy's vicarage, with bits of furniture flying around the characters. Sure, it's a bit distracting to have characters stop and describe these things, but the images remain arresting, the atmosphere and style more than a little reminiscent of Bidmead's earlier Castrovalva.

I can't pretend that, in its current form, the story isn't a bit of a mess. The restriction against naming the Master would have harmed the story, even if Bidmead's attempts to make something clever out of that hadn't backfired spectacularly. While most of the performances are very good, the decision to cast actress Susan Sheridan as an 11-year-old boy is poorly judged, as it is all too clearly a woman putting on a funny voice (though it's debatable whether this is actually any worse than the wooden child performance heard in Mission to Magnus). The narrative is just about coherent - but even paying close attention, the climax is very confusing, and the brief epilogue does little to clear up the muddle.

In the end, my positive rating of the story comes down to personal taste. I've always enjoyed the imagination and atmosphere of Bidmead's television stories. Never mind his stated goal of "hard science" - His stories feature some of the most imaginative science fantasy found in Doctor Who, and the lyrical, semi-magical quality of his stories is something I respond to. The Big Finish production of The Hollows of Time is a shadow of what the story would have been on television... But I still find myself responding to Bidmead's concepts, set pieces, and atmosphere.

I won't argue with those who dislike this story, as all the common complaints made against it are valid. All I can say is: I still enjoy it, and am happier to have it in a less-than-ideal format than not to have it at all.

Overall Rating: 6/10.

Previous Story: Leviathan
Next Story: Paradise 5

Previous Television Story: Revelation of the Daleks
Next Television Story: Trial of a Timelord - The Mysterious Planet (not yet reviewed)

Search Amazon.com for Doctor Who

6th Doctor Audio Review Index

6th Doctor Television Review Index


Doctor Who: The Lost Stories Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

1-3. Leviathan

2 episodes. Approx. 115 minutes. Written by: Brian Finch, Paul Finch. Directed by: Ken Bentley. Produced by: David Richardson.


THE PLOT

A fault forces the Doctor to materialize the TARDIS in an unknown setting. At first glance, he and Peri believe they have landed on medieval Earth. There is a nearby castle presided over by a feudal baron (John Banks), who rules over the local village of New Haven with an iron fist. But too many things don't fit: The villagers are summoned to the castle when it is "their Time," and are never seen again. Those who flee are pursued by Herne the Hunter, a figure out of Celtic mythology who should not actually exist. The few who escape hide in caves, and are scorned by the villagers as "Pariah."

The more the Doctor learns, the more clear it is that something is wrong beyond the usual oppressiveness of medieval Europe. When he recognizes the emblem of The Sentinels of the New Dawn, he realizes that the answers lie within the castle - but the only sure way in is to allow himself to be made the baron's prisoner!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: It's a shame this script wasn't produced for television, as this is the exact characterization the Sixth Doctor needed in Season 22 (for which this was originally written). He's still spiky, but he's also very shrewd. He walks into New Haven knowing full well that he will be apprehended, but he uses his time wisely, noting every anachronism: The lack of shops and merchants, the loaf of white bread. When he's taken to the baron, he baits him mercilessly until the power behind him is revealed, then shows off his own swashbuckling skills when the man draws a sword on him. He's also compassionate: Near the end of Part one, he encounters a dying "Pariah," one of the band of rebels. He pauses in his escape to comfort the boy as he dies. When the boy gasps that someone needs to stop what's happening, the Doctor announces with grim resolve: "Someone will."

Peri: This is also a good story for Peri. Much of the story sees her separated from the Doctor. In a neat departure from the norm, she is captured not by the villains, but by the rebel Pariah. She gets a particularly strong scene in Part Two, when convincing the Pariah to fight instead of hide. "I have been tortured. I know what it's like. I also know that the low-lives who do it are the sort who will only be encouraged to do it again if you don't resist!" Nicola Bryant puts tangible emotion into Peri's vehement appeal, and Peri's plan - to recruit the youth of the village - allows her a nicely proactive role in the story.


THOUGHTS

Leviathan is the first of Big Finish's Lost Stories that was not part of the original, cancelled Season 23. This story was developed for Season 22, but ultimately "written off" by script editor Eric Saward.

Fittingly enough, it's the first genuinely good Lost Story.

Really, this is the exact type of story that Season 22 needed more of. It features: a spiky but compassionate Doctor, an intriguing set up, a threatening monster based on mythology (well within the BBC's ability to create), and a genuinely terrific cliffhanger. Even I don't think Saward was deliberately sabotaging the show by rejecting good scripts while accepting bad ones, so I'm guessing Leviathan's rejection was down to the many action scenes which would have been difficult for the series to realize. Even so, this would have been worth the effort. If an action scene or two came across as clunky, that would have been a small price to pay for such an excellent Doctor characterization and such a generally well-turned piece of drama.

Credit, as usual, to Big Finish's production. This is an action-heavy story, with multiple battle scenes, including some swordplay between the Doctor and the Baron. None of it is difficult to visualize, and the Doctor/Baron encounter is both vivid and enjoyable. The music score is just enough like '80's Who to feel right for the era, but carefully designed to support rather than distract from the action and environments.

The pace is fast. Original writer Brian Finch was a veteran television scribe and clearly recognized the value of moving the characters from one dangerous situation to the next, and the first episode is particularly free of lulls. I detect some Saward influence in an unwelcome and unnecessary subplot involving a mercenary space salvage team; this strand isn't even introduced until Episode Two, and it adds nothing but clutter to a story that works splendidly without it. But the annoyance of this subplot is countered by a string of appropriately ghoulish revelations as we near the end, including a hall of tube-fed human fetuses (which doubtless would not have been allowed in the final product) and coffins housing only half-decomposed bodies.

I genuinely regret that this story wasn't made for television at the time it was mooted, as it would have formed one of Season 22's highlights. I am glad at least that it was resurrected for audio, and it's slotted into the Lost Stories range perfectly: After two weak stories that were probably best left unmade, it was time for a top-notch, imaginative work to showcase what Doctor Who is capable of.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Previous Story: Mission to Magnus
Next Story: The Hollows of Time

Previous Television Story: Revelation of the Daleks
Next Television Story: Trial of a Timelord - The Mysterious Planet (not yet reviewed)

Search Amazon.com for Doctor Who

6th Doctor Audio Review Index

6th Doctor Television Review Index


Doctor Who: The Lost Stories Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

1-2. Mission to Magnus.

2 episodes. Approx. 117 minutes. Written by: Philip Martin. Directed by: Lisa Bowerman. Produced by: David Richardson. 


THE PLOT

Magnus is a world shaped by a virus that kills any male human exposed to sunlight, but leaves women unharmed. The result is a female-dominated society, ruled by the power-hungry Rana Zandusia (Maggie Steed). Her reign is under threat, however. The men of the neighboring world of Salvak have discovered a cure to the virus and intend to invade. Presumably not because of a shortage of women on their world, and probably not to rescue the handful of oppressed males native to Magnus, but just because a planet of women is too tempting to resist taking by force (in more ways than one, as I'll discuss below).

The Rana, who inexplicably is accepting advice by the Doctor's old enemy Sil (Nabil Shaban), intends to steal Time Lord technology to prevent the Salvakians from ever curing the virus. But an even greater threat has already infiltrated Magnus. The Ice Warriors are here, and they plan to use nukes (the clean kind, that don't have any radiation) to change Magnus' climate to make it cold. That's apparently much easier than simply conquering a planet that already is cold. 

The Doctor is the only one who can stand in their way - If he can stop cowering around his old school bully, that is...


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: The story is awful.  That said, Colin Baker is outstanding, and writer Philip Martin has given him a very strong role. No locking the Doctor in a cell for half a story here - He's active throughout, whether playing mind games with the telepathic Ulema (Tina Jones) or distracting an Ice Warrior to allow young Vion (William Townsend) to bring down an ice ceiling. When delving into his mind, Ulema describes his thoughts as "a swirl, a dance of delight!" We learn that the Doctor was bullied at the Prydonian Academy by the brutish but well-connected Anzor (Malcolm Rennie), and that he remains terrified of his schoolboy nemesis... Something which could have been used to good dramatic effect, if the script had an ounce of subtlety. Instead, the Doctor cowers behind the TARDIS console in their first scene together, then treats him like any other disliked authority figure in their remaining encounters. 

Peri: "I'm used to following alpha males," she quips when Vion tells her to follow him to the Rana's castle early in the story. Nicola Bryant's delivery emphasizes the sarcasm... but based on the actual story, she might as well be saying it in all sincerity. Even when rescuing Vion, every action she takes is at his direction. It would have taken less time, and would have strengthened Peri's role, had she freed him on her own initiative. She does get a decent scene in which she does some fast talking to forestall execution by an Ice Warrior, but this is an overall quite weak showing for her.

Sil: His role in Vengeance on Varos was so memorable, a genuinely well-written villain who was perfectly cast, that it was inevitable that he would make a return appearance. He did so the following season, in the Trial of a Timelord segment, Mindwarp. His role there was much weaker than in Varos - but it was still infinitely better than this, his originally intended second story. Sil is completely superfluous, neither helping nor hindering the Doctor's efforts, and it seems clear he was tacked onto the story to satisfy a brief. The good news is that Nabil Shaban makes as much of a meal of the role on audio as he did on television, recapturing Sil's oily speech patterns and inimitable laugh to perfection. At least it appears to have paved the way for Shaban to reprise the role in better stories in the future.

Ice Warriors: With Sil reduced to providing commentary on the sidelines, that should at least allow plenty of room for the Ice Warriors to make a triumphant return as genuinely formidable foes! Or not. In classic Season 22 fashion, the Ice Warriors aren't even seen until the end of the first episode - meaning that a full hour of this two-hour story is spent filling time with Rana's attempts to gain access to the TARDIS, something that's irrelevant to the actual plot. When the Ice Warriors do appear, they come across as complete bumblers, failing to kill the Doctor and his party so many times that it actually becomes quite funny. The finale witnesses the Ice Warriors literally falling over dead when the rays of the sun hit them (just as they're about to execute the heroes, of course). What next? Chase them off by lighting a match?


THOUGHTS

One thing about Big Finish's Lost Stories range: It makes me appreciate how little was lost when the original Season 23 was cancelled. The Nightmare Fair was an adequate but uninspired runaround, slightly enlivened by writer Graham Williams' wit and some strong performances. The Ultimate Evil was not adapted for audio, as terms could not be reached between Big Finish and writer Wally Daly, but I've seen/read very little to indicate it would have been anything other than poor. Mission to Magnus is even worse, a hodgepog of half-baked ideas (mostly bad ones) thrown clumsily into the same set of episodes with no visible effort given to making them actually work together. Say what you will about Trial - nothing in it was anywhere near as bad as this!

I barely know where to begin in cataloging the ways in which the story fails. Had it been produced, it would likely be regarded as the Spock's Brain of Doctor Who - complete with sexual politics that already seemed dated in the 1960's being put front-and-center in a mid-1980's story! The ending is even roughly the same, as the women of Magnus are told point-blank that they are going to be forced into marriages they show absolutely no sign of wanting. "You'll enjoy the mingling of the sexes," Ishka (Nicholas Briggs) leers - and the situation is treated by all as basically a grand joke.

I could look past the ludicrous sexism and even the poor plot construction if the story was at least fun to listen to. The first half almost meets this standard. By any critical measure, it's a horrible, cliched, cheese-fest, but for the first episode it's a passably diverting horrible, cliched, cheese-fest.

Once the Ice Warriors lumber into view, however, it descends into scene after scene of running around corridors, with the Ice Warriors constantly repeating that they will execute everyone on sight only to take the Doctor's party prisoner every time they encounter them. The Ice Warriors plan is to set off a big bomb. The Doctor's plan to correct the damage? You guessed it - Set off a big bomb (well, a series of bombs). There's no spark or imagination to any of it, and it just lumbers along for an hour until the appalling "funny rape" ending at least has the courtesy to bring it to a close.

I will say that Big Finish's production standards remain outstanding. Simon Robinson's music and sound design really enforces the feel of mid-'80's Who, and it's easy to visualize even the most action-heavy parts of the narrative. It's very well-made, and Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, and Nabil Shaban are all on fine form.

It's just a shame it's all wasted on such a pathetic story, one that had it been produced would almost certainly be a regular feature on lists of the series' all-time worst.


Overall Rating: 1/10.

Previous Story: The Nightmare Fair
Next Story: Leviathan

Previous Television Story: Revelation of the Daleks
Next Television Story: Trial of a Timelord - The Mysterious Planet (not yet reviewed)

Search Amazon.com for Doctor Who

6th Doctor Audio Review Index

6th Doctor Television Review Index


Doctor Who: The Lost Stories Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

1-1. The Nightmare Fair.

2 episodes. Approx. 97 minutes. Written by: Graham Williams, John Ainsworth. Directed by: John Ainsworth. Produced by: David Richardson. 


THE PLOT

The Doctor and Peri find themselves at the Blackpool fun fair, much to the Doctor's delight. But this is no chance arrival. Something isn't quite right in this amusement park. Kevin (Matthew Noble) is a young man who's been hanging about the park, but not for entertainment. He is searching for his younger brother, who disappeared on a visit to Blackpool.

Soon, all three have become pawns in a game they don't even know they are playing. The Celestial Toymaker (David Bailie) has made a home for himself deep within the heart of Blackpool, luring players into his deadly games. He is preparing his grandest game yet, one which unleash havoc throughout the world - and with the arrival of the Doctor, one of the few beings to ever defeat him at his games, he has found the perfect player on whom to test this great project. The Doctor will play... And the Toymaker will have his revenge!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Though much has been made about the Sixth Doctor's egocentric nature, and a few early scenes nod to this, his characterization in this story focuses mainly on his morality. The Toymaker manipulates this trait, drawing righteous indignation from the Doctor through his treatment of the (very) long suffering servant Shardlow (William Whymper). The Doctor makes a show of confidence in his first meeting with the Toymaker, rubbing the celestial entity's face in the fact that he has beaten him before - but he privately admits to Peri and Kevin that his main hope is to escape and that he'll count himself very lucky if he manages that. When he realizes something of the Toymaker's nature, he feels pity at the other being's endless isolation, and his regret at the action he must take to stop him is tangible. Colin Baker is excellent throughout, giving a considerable boost to a script that could be charitably called problematic.

Peri: Peri's best moment is a throwaway one: Reunited with the Doctor in his cell, she quickly falls into her familiar bickering with him. Their clear fondness as they trade barbs prompts Kevin to observe that they've been together for a while. It's a fun character beat in a serial that otherwise reduces Peri to generic companion status, with her most useful contribution to the narrative being to scream at the right moment.

Celestial Toymaker: With there being no possibility of Michael Gough returning as the Toymaker, Big Finish were left with no choice but to recast. David Bailie proves an excellent replacement; in fact, I think I prefer his performance to Gough's. He doesn't emphasize the sinsiter qualities of the character as strongly as Gough did, trusting to the context to do that. Instead, he focuses his performance on the Toymaker's weariness. He is bored, depressed at how predictable every player in every one of his games has become. When the Doctor agrees to play his game, he reacts with childlike glee, and his cackle as he says, "You will play!" is more joyous than evil - which actually makes it more disturbing. 


THOUGHTS

The Nightmare Fair was planned as the first story of the original Season 23, before the hiatus led to a change in plans. The story was cancelled within a couple weeks of its scheduled production, which leads me to wonder if it mightn't have been more cost effective to have at least produced this one story as a "special" than to pay off all the people contracted.

The script is by Graham Williams, who produced Seasons 15 - 17. Though the script has had some light audio adaptation, changes are very minor. Williams' writing is dialogue-heavy in any case, and it's clear he gets more pleasure from having characters indulge in witty repartee than in crafting action scenes. This makes for an easy transition to audio, leaving the Big Finish version very close to what would have gone in front of cameras in 1985.

As a story, The Nightmare Fair is... okay. There are severe pacing issues. The first episode was very obviously written to show off Blackpool locations, with irrelevant bits with the Doctor and Peri to riding roller coasters and poking around the funfair taking up quite a bit of the first half of the episode. The roller coaster becomes a source of unintentional hilarity, as Peri's sounds of delight on the ride rise and fall in pitch in such a way... Well, I'll restrict myself to observing that this bit could be lifted wholesale into a very different type of production.

The second episode runs close to a full hour, and its length points to just how bad the pacing issues become. We end Part One with the promise that the Doctor is about to play the Toymaker... but that can't happen until the end of the story, meaning that it is now time for padding. A lot of padding. The Doctor is taken to a cell, where he and a mismatched group of alien and android cellmates spend an interminable amount of time building a Thingy while the Toymaker prepares his "Great Work." The scenes fall into two categories: The Toymaker scenes are amusing, thanks in no small part to David Bailie's wonderful performance, while the Doctor's very quickly become very boring. 

Things do pick up when the Toymaker finally decides it's time to have his game with the Doctor. The verbal jousts between Doctor and Toymaker are genuinely terrific, with the Toymaker enthusing over the various blood sports in human history. The Doctor's compassion for the Toymaker, when he finally realizes something of the other being's nature, is also a wonderful moment, as is his regret over the solution he has to employ. And it should be said that Big Finish's production is up to the company's usual high standards, with the scenes of the game working surprisingly well.

In the end, The Nightmare Fair is passably entertaining, and it would have been a perfectly acceptable television story - but it's hard to find it a tragedy that it wasn't. The Doctor/Toymaker scenes are excellent, but there aren't enough of them to make up for the thin plot and awkward pacing. 

The story's main value is as a curiosity piece, a look at what might have been had the hiatus never happened. It isn't bad... but had it been produced, it would likely be regarded as yet another middling story from one of the series' weaker periods.


Overall Rating: 5/10.

Next Story: Mission to Magnus

Previous Television Story: Revelation of the Daleks
Next Television Story: Trial of a Timelord - The Mysterious Planet (not yet reviewed)

Search Amazon.com for Doctor Who

6th Doctor Audio Review Index

6th Doctor Television Review Index


Doctor Who: The Lost Stories Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads