The Reign of Terror

Enraged at Ian's suggestion that he cannot control the TARDIS, the Doctor sets a course and declares that he has returned Barbara and Ian to their home on Earth. Once outside the ship, though, the crew discover that they are not in England of 1963 but France in 1794 during the Revolution. Ian, Susan and Barbara are captured and taken to the Conceirgerie while the Doctor makes his way there in disguise to rescue them, although as he makes his attempts to free his friends they fall in with groups of spies and revolutionaries. The Doctor himself is drawn into a web of intrigue and meets with the Tyrant of France - Robespierre himself - as the tide of history moves towards the inevitable events that take France into history.

This is another purely historical adventure spanning six episodes with no science fiction elements to it outside of the series premise. The location neatly "bookends" the first season as Susan was seen reading from a book on the French Revolution back in An Unearthly Child, and she tells Ian and Barbara that this is the Doctor's favourite period in Earth history. The Doctor does not seem to show any particular pleasure at being present in it though; his main goal is to get his companions and get out, not linger for the violence in which the era is steeped. He does, however, get to assume the guise of a regional governor to aid in his ambitions, and seems to enjoy playing it up and yelling at a lot of people to get his way. Indeed, the costume he appropriates for this end is very grand and gets featured on the cover of any media release for the title. Being an adventure in the past, Barbara again uses her knowledge of what went on to see where they are headed, and makes an impassioned speech in the fifth episode about the circumstances of the time and how people do not always deserve what they get, comeuppance or otherwise. Susan doesn't get to do much except get put in prison, escape with a fever, and then get put into prison again. It's not been said if this was done deliberately to get some away time for Carole Ann Ford as had been done for other series regulars already this season. It's interesting to note that neither Barbara nor Ian express any concern over Susan's sudden illness - they know she is not from Earth and should realize that her immune system would be different from theirs and taking her to a physician in 18th century France might get her noticed in a bad way,

My first experience with this adventure was in print, a Target novel oh so very long ago. Regular range contributor Ian Marter (who would play companion Harry Sullivan) brought the tale to life on printed page with great skill, evoking all the grit and dirt of the city of Paris in that age, and the violent public deaths at the guillotine. As I read it I remembered feeling, not for the first time, frustrated at the absence of episodes four and five from the BBC archive, which meant there was no way I was going to get to enjoy this adventure on screen unless there was a miraculous find. In 1990 I came into contact with some other local fans and the fan network of "lost" episodes where iffy quality video copies of incomplete stories made the rounds on VHS tapes, copied again and again until the sound was muffled and drowned out with noise, and the picture quality was that of an old newsreel in a snowstorm. I got my hands on not-bad quality copies of the existing episodes and was able to get a feel for what I was missing, although episodes four and five were still nowhere to be seen, and I filled in those blanks with what I had read. As the BBC's marketing program expanded the episodes were finally released on VHS with some linking scenes shot with Carole Ann Ford providing narration and details of what we were missing; incomplete as it was, I could still finally see it clearly. I got a bit closer to the story, though, when the BBC Radio Collection released the entire story soundtrack, much as with Marco Polo, and now I could hear what was missing and experience the whole story, almost. Anytime there was rumour of lost episodes found I was hoping for the revelation that the missing two from this adventure were going to be on the list so it could be fully restored and put on DVD, bringing the first full season to near completion, with only the seven episodes of Marco Polo left out in the cold somewhere. The last time any copies of the two missing episodes could really be traced was Cyprus in 1974 where they were reportedly destroyed during the Turkish invasion.

In 2013 the story was finally done up properly for a DVD release with the existing episodes cleaned up for the release, and the missing ones recreated in animation form. It's no Disney quality animation and it's not anime, but what they achieved is quite remarkable. This practice had become the norm for a while where missing episodes were concerned if they were needed to complete a story for release, although disappointingly the incomplete adventure The Underwater Menace does not get this treatment. The animation companies change between releases but each of them are very good with the character likeness well captured; some may argue that the visuals are not as good as they would like, being sometimes static and not as fully animated as they would like, but the option to not watch them is there for those folks. Specifically for Reign of Terror I found the use of shadow made the episodes feel a lot more menacing, and some of the more expressive faces look freakish, most notably Hartnell's buggy eyes at times. But the big beef I have, and it's not a big one really, is that some scenes where there was nothing to reference as to what characters were doing there's a lot of standing about and close ups of faces looking this way and that much like pre-commercial cliffhangers for soap operas where they have run out of dialogue.

So that's season one finished, plus some extras. Reign of Terror completed broadcast on 12 September 1964 and the next televised episode was Planet of Giants on 31 October 1694. Most of the televised serials of season one left very few gaps between adventures, making placement of new material tricky, but as there is a discernible gap between episodes here there's a lot of opportunity to add stories. BBC Books and Big Finish have produced a good spread of material which fits here nicely...

NEXT EPISODE : CITY AT WORLD'S END

The Sensorites

The TARDIS lands inside a spaceship in orbit around the planet Sense Shpere. At first the TARDIS crew believe that the ship's crew - Captain Maitland and Carol - are dead, but then realize that they are merely in some form of suspended animation and manage to revive them. Matiland, Carol and a third crewman, John, are captives of the Sensorites who live below on the Sense Sphere, and although they are being kept prisoner they have not been killed. The Sensorites do not want the Earth ship to leave lest they return with more humans bent on plundering their world, and they even go so far as to steal the lock of the TARDIS and maroon the Doctor and his companions as well. Susan realizes that the Sensorites are a telepathic species and is able to communicate with them directly, resulting in the travellers going down to the Sense Sphere in an effort to broker a peace and secure their freedom, but there is more going on on the planet than meets the eye.

At six episodes in length The Sensorites is a pretty long tale to tell, and to watch all in one go. I had to break it up over a couple days while away on a work junket, taking in one before bed, one at breakfast and a couple more at lunch and so on. First time I ever saw it, though, I watched it on a Saturday afternoon spending almost three hours on the couch taking in the tale as it slowly unfolded. The pace just plods along for the first two episodes with the action confined to the bridge and two short corridors of the Earth ship - it's a claustrophobic start but it's a little hard to swallow that the TARDIS crew were standing within meters of the ship and did not notice the Sensorites burning the lock out of the door (more on THAT little tidbit shortly). And when the Sensorites appear within the ship Ian and Barbara make a real meal out of walking down one corridor and up the next looking for them, dragging the scene out for a couple painful minutes.

The Sensorites themselves are an interesting people; out of the three "monsters" of the season they are not evil conquerors like the Daleks nor are they like the murderous Voords; they are a peaceful species who seem to just want to be left alone, going so far as to imprison anyone who might betray the secrets of their world. The last time they met people from Earth they were stricken by a disease which they assume was brought by their visitors so they are understandably wary. There is division amongst them as well, with the First Elder being reasonable and wanting to end hostilities, but the City Administrator (the Rob Ford of the Sensorite Nation) remaining suspicious and forming his own plots against the TARDIS crew.

Susan not looking silly at all

Barbara does not come down to the planet with the others and spends episodes four and five on the spaceship much as the Doctor was out of sight for a couple episodes of Keys of Marinus to allow the actor a break from shooting. This makes for a convenient way to give other characters a bit more screen time, most notably Susan. She's resenting being treated like a child by the Doctor; her intelligence vastly out paces Ian and Barbara when it comes to book smarts but she is still terribly naive about things which makes her grandfather have to rein her in from time to time. Her latent telepathy comes to the forefront this time, although it was hinted at in The Edge of Destruction when she felt another presence on the TARDIS during its blackout; now she can communicate with the Sensorites by touching her temples and talking off to the distance. Good thing she does that, she'd look silly doing anything else. She's allowed a moment of nostalgia for her home planet, too, telling the First Elder about the silver leaves in the moonlight and her desire to see it again one day. She's not in any hurry, really, she's enjoying the travels, just not being treated like the junior member of the crew. At least she doesn't lose her shit this time.

Interesting that the TARDIS appears to be vulnerable to attack by the Sensorites with the lock so easily cut away. So far the Doctor has not made any claims about the ship being invincible, we have only Susan's warning to Ian that if the lock is tampered with it will melt. There was no sign of melting here, but to see the ship incapacitated like this in the early days would be interesting for viewers, maybe a bit scary for the kids. The TARDIS is, in effect, home for the crew, and to have one's home attacked is a frightening prospect. It makes the premise of Sorcerer's Apprentice now look a bit out of sorts; if the ship was capable of protecting itself in the novel it should have here, but here comes retcon to suggest that the erratic nature of the TARDIS systems is not limited to its inability to blend in with its surroundings or to steer straight, bit its defence systems are prone to sporadic outages as well. As a theory it fits, but given that Apprentice and other novels are non-canon its really up to the reader or the viewer to decide which to accept.

There was always the cry about the show being underfunded or running over budget - this has been said no matter who was the Doctor or who was producing it - but really, this could have been trimmed down to four parts instead of six to save a few bucks.. Aside from the slow scenes tiptoeing around inside the Earth ship one of the other scenes that could go would be the awkward opening bit inside the TARDIS where the whole season is recapped. This isn't even the season finale so why the scene was included is beyond me. If it's purpose is to show how the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan have become a bit of a family over the series there's no real need to say it; witness how the Doctor was willing to leave Barbara behind in the Dalek city or toss both her and Ian off the ship in the early episodes, but now they all watch out for and care for each other. They've come a long way, and the season finale is right around the corner.

NEXT EPISODE : THE REIGN OF TERROR

The Aztecs

The TARDIS returns to Earth in the 15th century, having landed inside an Aztec tomb. Barbara emerges from the tomb and it hailed as a reincarnated spirit and worshipped accordingly, and when the Doctor, Ian and Susan follow her they are greeted as her servants and honoured by the Aztec people. The door to the tomb, however, is a one way affair and the crew are cut off from the ship and have to bide their time while the Doctor tried to find a way back in. Sickened by the practise of human sacrifice, Barbara tries to intervene and lands the group in peril, making an enemy of the local high priest of sacrifice who swears to defame Barbara and have them all killed.

A certain formula has started to develop now with the Doctor and company separated from the TARDIS and having to focus on surviving while they get back to it. As a plot device it's handy enough I suppose but it's only since I have started experiencing the show and all it's multimedia again that I have seen it as less of a deus ex machina and more of a deus minus machina situation, at least insofar as three of the so far six televised adventures (and one novel set amongst them) have shown. Still, every problem has a solution and if the Doctor has to flirt shamelessly with a lonely widow to get what he wants (in this case a meeting with someone who has insight into the tomb's design) then so be it. Poor Cameca, led on by the rascal Doctor and his slippery ways. He's not the only one deceiving people though; Barbara is playing off the vengeful high priest of sacrifice, Tlotoxl, against the more rational high priest of knowledge, Autloc, in her attempts to keep her friends safe, but her knowledge of history keeps her ahead of the game, despite her desire to change it.

Oh yeah, changing history, that old thing. The Doctor swears up and down that it cannot be done, and not out of some cause and effect sort of logic but the simple truth that history is set and they as travellers cannot hope to do much more than observe. He implies that he knows this from his personal experiences, but doesn't go into them; by contrast in the new series history will get changed left and right as it suits the writers (some clever, some just lazy cop-outs).

Ian tangles with the warrior thug Ixta who is motivated to kill him by Tlotoxl's urging and his fear of losing his position of commander of the armies. Ian isn't interested in the job but still has a role to play and gets into a few dust ups with Ixta, some better choreographed than others. WWF it ain't. But originally when the character of Ian was drawn up for the show he was supposed to be athletic and use gymnastics, so here he gets to be a bit of what he might have been. I just know that some of that close quarters wrestling might have been a bit... ahh.. whiffy in a hot climate before the evolution of Speed Stick. And speaking of close quarters, interesting to see in episode three that Ian and Ixta share sleeping space despite knowing that they are going to fight to the death one day.

Susan lands herself in it real bad though. Back in Marco Polo she was horrified to hear that her friend Ping-Cho was going to be in an arranged marriage with a much older man, so when she finds herself in a similar position she's not happy. The Perfect Victim, as it turns out, gets to have anything he wants in his last days before he is sacrificed to the gods, and Tlotoxl engineers a meeting between he and Susan. And he likes and wants her. And aside from one moment in the first episode, Susan doesn't really lose her shit this time. Much.

Like Keys of Marinus, The Aztecs was an adventure I first enjoyed in print before seeing it on TV and I feel that the translation to printed page doesn't really harm the enjoyment of the TV serial. True there is a sense of the Aztec city being far more grand, and having more than 12 citizens including the bored looking personal guards in Barbara's throne room, and the Ian vs Ixta brawls are more dramatic on page, but small beans in the end. The DVD version I watched was a "special edition" with extra material from its original release and a few new things including a newly (at the time) discovered episode as a bonus. What I found most interesting of the extra material was a vignette about how the original prints of The Aztecs were restored for DVD release, including the clever VIDFire process which recreates the smooth flow of studio video quality, although it really makes it obvious which parts were done on film in other studios. That's nothing new if you've seen any of the 1970s episodes where the picture quality changes from video clarity to slightly murky film for exterior shots. It's not so jarring in The Aztecs but it's still noticeable with regards to the lighting and the film grain.

 NEXT EPISODE : THE SENSORITES

The Keys of Marinus

The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Susan, Barbara and Ian to what appears to be a deserted island with glass shard beach and a looming pyramid-like tower, all surrounded by a sea of acid. There they meet a man named Arbitan, who is the keeper of a machine called the Conscience of Marinus. The Conscience was designed to be the planet's judge and keep the citizens from committing acts of violence but when its power was deemed to be too great its activation keys were removed and hidden across the planet, out of reach of a man named Yartek and his followers, the Voord. Arbitan needs the keys back and blocks the travellers from the TARDIS, ransoming it for their help in collecting the keys and returning them to him. Reluctantly they agree and embark on a journey across Marinus that takes them to a city which is too good to be true, a jungle where the plants attack, a treacherous polar region, and to a highly civilized city rocked by a recent murder.

My first encounter with this story was when I bought the Target paperback off the shelf at the Coles in Upper Canada Mall in Newmarket a long time ago. The novelization was done by Philip Hinchcliffe, a series producer in the mid years of the show, and I remember being really drawn into it and enjoying it as a 12 year old would have. I would not see the actual episodes until many years later when Buffalo Channel 17 would show the omnibus adventure on a Saturday afternoon, which was a bit of a mind-number really. It's six episodes of good Doctor Who but seen in one go it's a bit daunting - this time I split it up between domestic tasks on a Sunday afternoon.

It's another big epic adventure for the crew, this one spread over six episodes. This makes for a variety of settings, some a bit better realized than others as production budgets back in the early days were pretty low and the design team did not have a lot to work with, just their imagination and some makeshift skills. The DVD extra, called The Sets of Marinus, features series designer Ray Cusick giving some pretty candid thoughts about the quality of what he had to work with, and he's pretty realistic about it all and not exactly pleased with his work. Visually yeah it's not as solid looking as it could have been and although some of the sets are very simple and look as if they were put together cheaply they're not so horrible that they ruin the effect of the show. The transportation effects are simple enough but would have thrilled the viewers at the time; the Doctor and company all traverse Marinus though use of wrist worn travel dials, with transport being more or less instant, and the screen is split to allow for some to vanish and those left behind to react incredulously.

Parts of the script, however, could have used a bit more work. I don't know if I am looking at this the wrong way or not but if the TARDIS crew are eager to get this quest over with, why are they settling in as new residents at the city of Morphoton in the second episode? Barbara and Susan are all keen to go dress shopping all of a sudden and the Doctor is lured away by the promise of an advanced laboratory. Ian remains skeptical about the whole thing but eventually it's Barbara who realizes the truth behind what's going on. The Doctor travels ahead to where he believes the fourth keys is to be found leaving Susan with Barbara and Ian to travel with two people who were previously sent to find the keys - Arbitan's daughter Sabetha and a young man named Altos (played by Robin Phillips who has some pretty fetching legs - through even the dreadful snow episode he still shoes em off travelling Marinus in, effectively, a speedo and a shirt with a sort of cape, and sandals... Phillips passed away last summer in Straford, Ontario, just a few hours away from where I used to live). This was devised so William Hartnell could take a break from production, and the inclusion of Sabetha and Altos kept the numbers up so there was enough narrative to go around. With five people, though, some of the shots get a bit crowded here and there. And in other notable moments, Susan loses her shit a lot in this one. One of her shoes falls into an acid pool and she loses it. A Voord tries to kill her and she loses it (we'll allow that one). The jungle is noisy and she loses it. A vine falls across her legs and she loses it. She manages to pluck up enough courage to try using a rope bridge and then some hastily slung together ice stalactites (which like stryofoam - shhhh) to cross a sheer drop and then loses it again when she's kidnapped and held at gunpoint.

And how about the Voord as enemies? Script author Terry Nation only a couple stories ago gave the show the Daleks, and their fame would endure forever. Word is that the Voord were to become big baddies as well, menacing as they were in the all-black rubber suits with the handlebar headpiece (one assumes this was critical to how the Voord stayed immune to the effects of the Conscience, otherwise why wear such things) but when they can be seen tripping over their own flippers in some shots they lose something of that menace. There's no doubting that they are particularly vicious though, preferring to stab their enemies to death rather than use a gun. If they'd had more screen time then maybe they might have come into their own a bit more, but only appearing in episodes one and six doesn't give them enough time to make a lasting impression.

The Voord are going to get their shot at a sequel, though, just not right away. For the meantime the TARDIS crew are headed back to Earth for another adventure in history...

NEXT EPISODE : THE AZTECS

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

When the news came that we were going to get original novels carrying on from where the original series left off in 1989 it was cause enough for fans to rejoice, but after a while Virgin Publishing went one further and announced The Missing Adventures range of novels which would bring us new stories from the earlier eras of the series. Virgin actually tested the waters on this concept with a range of three "Missing Episodes" novels based on scripts that did not make it to television, and with those behind them they carried on with the next ones. The New Adventures featuring the seventh Doctor were made to look a more uniform set with matching white spines, and thus the Missing Adventures were produced with sharp black ones to separate them, and a standard cover format of the old diamond logo from the 1970s with a panel of illustration artwork and a rectangular sidebar of art on the side depicting the Doctor and a companion from the story. The first of the Missing Adventures (hereafter known as MA's) was published in 1994, Thirty three titles were produced in total, and each of the past Doctors got a good representation in print, averaging about four titles featuring each Doctor and all but one companion - Leela - was featured in print. The rules were simple: stories were to fit in between televised episodes and there were to be no radical departures from the series format. As the novel series is not official series canon, there are a few small continuity issues here and there, but that's to be expected when dealing with such a long series. No one can be expected to know everything.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice picks up only moments after the TARDIS departs from the court of Kublai Khan; the ship sets down again almost immediately prompting Ian and Barbara to question if they have indeed moved that far at all in such a short amount of time. The Doctor tells them that the time spend in transit has very little bearing on the actual distance they travel, and shows them this by leading the crew outside to an idyllic forest glade which is definitely not China of 1289. Almost immediately they are set upon by a fire breathing dragon, and realize as the adventure continues that they are on a world where fantasy has come true, complete with ye olde style knights and castles, dragons which breathe fire, magical beasts, leprechauns, and magic wielding sorcerers. And to make things even worse, there's a hostile fleet of military spaceships in orbit on a mission of its own to restore the crumbling Earth empire and the TARDIS has raised its defense shields and locked the crew out.

The novel unfolds like an epic tale similar to Marco Polo and The Daleks with the TARDIS crew spending weeks, maybe months on this world as they are dragged into its internal conflicts. The Doctor refuses to believe in magic and wants only to learn what has happened to the TARDIS but when Susan is taken hostage by the villainous wizard Dhal and used in his plot to gain power, the rest of the crew are forced to get involved. Ian and the Doctor embark on a quest for a mythical object which will turn the tide against Dhal, or so everyone hopes, and Barbara is left to mix with the nobles of the land. The feeling of time passing in great lengths is not maintained, though, in the sequences with Susan where she is locked up by Dhal, dragged out to be taunted and gloated at, and then locked up again. Susan is not alone, though, and has a kidnapped princess as company in her cel and the two of them together play off each other well. Author Christopher Bulis plays a few retcon games with Susan's dialogue (retcon meaning "retroactive continuity") and drops hints about she and the Doctor having titles where they come from but not exactly being nobles, and there is a bit of a flirtation with her latent telepathic abilities that allowed her to sense something wrong inside the TARDIS back in Edge of Destruction. The Doctor, Barbara and Ian all come across on paper almost perfectly to their screen lives - Bulis captures their mannerisms well, right down to the Doctor's crankiness and the inevitable clashes with Ian when they do not agree. The people of Avalon read a bit cliche'd, as do the military folks in their ships, but I found myself stifling a chuckle at the way Bulis has the ape-guards speak - it's shades of the Ogrons (who will not actually appear in this blog for a while).

And then it happened.

I found something about the book I did not like. Bulis does well on his narrative, it's pretty standard stuff that evokes more or less vivid images, but every so often he punctuates the pages with the phrase "and then it happened" followed by, well, something happening. I spotted it about three times on the last day I was reading the book. It's all fine and dandy to use it once but when it starts to show up a lot it doesn't really add anything to the sequence it is supposed to be enhancing. In fact I found it just annoyed my much like internet headlines of late which include that whole "...and then THIS happened" line. But as this was published in 1994 there were no such headlines to imitate, so I just take it as Bulis trying to be dramatic and not exactly succeeding. It didn't exactly spoil the book for me, but it could have been left out and things could have happened on their own without fanfare.

Other notable things - check out that cover. That's a nice striking red thing the Doctor has on and the slightly naughty looking Susan in her nightie is... interesting. The dragon with the TARDIS, though, looks a bit cartoonish, but still clever. Since all the MA's share this artwork and binding format they don't really sit well with the Target novels of the TV episodes they are set between, even because of their sheer size alone; Apprentice is 296 pages long, which is just about the combined length of its two neighbouring titles. I tried to shelve them all together and then a fellow fan friend of mine saw it and snorted "Oh, you're one of those people,". He was right, it looked bad. And it looked even worse with the BBC Books novels series which replaced Virgin's novels later on, so right now they sit together, a little cluster of black framed joy on the shelf. There's four more of them ahead in the first Doctor's adventures, but now back to TV.

NEXT EPISODE: THE KEYS OF MARINUS

Marco Polo

The TARDIS is broken. After its brush with near-destruction the ship has suffered a total power failure and stranded the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara in the Himalayas, or "the roof of the world" in 1289. All is not lost, though; they are happened upon by Venetian trader Marco Polo on his way to the court of his master, Kublai Khan, and are taken along as part of the entourage. Also in the mix are a warlord named Tegana and a young girl named Ping-Cho, all travelling together. Marco Polo is fascinated with the TARDIS and decides to appropriate it from the Doctor and give it to Kublai Khan in the hopes that the gift will persuade the Emperor to allow him to return home to Venice at last. The Doctor is furious but bides his time, working on his repairs in secret. But there are bigger problems: someone in the entourage is a traitor and is planning a murder spree for their own ends.

Aside from the presence of the time travellers there is no element of science fiction in this adventure at all, lending it to a more educational slant than a fanciful one, and allowing for some development of our main cast without a crisis happening around them. Susan makes quick friends with Ping-Cho, who is betrothed to a man she has never met who is old enough to be her grandfather; Susan is horrified by this and does not understand why her friend would merely go along with it. The Doctor plays sneaky games with Marco Polo where the TARDIS is concerned, slyly palming a second key to the craft and sneaking in and out when he can to do his repair work. Barbara is thrilled to actually be back in history, something she actually knows about - a change from cave men, Daleks and the terror of her experience in the previous episode. Maybe time travel isn't so bad for her now. And she has learned a bit about the Doctor, enough to know that his anger at everyone is really just his frustration at being held captive by a man he considers to be "his inferior". Ian stays the same for now as the more rational of the group; staying calm and trying to reason with Marco Polo and convince him to let them go. As for Marco Polo himself, he is a quietly desperate man; he wants to go home, he's been working for the Khan for a long time and just wants to return to Venice. He tries to ease the Doctor's mind by telling him he can build a new "flying caravan", which is really just he himself trying to justify his out and out theft of the TARDIS. Here and there Polo writes in his journal, his entries voiced over as he writes.The voice overs not serve as personal reflection for Polo but also to mark the passage of time for the serial. Whereas The Daleks took place over several days, Marco Polo is an early epic with the Doctor and company travelling with Polo for weeks, maybe a couple months.

There is a lot of good stuff to be said about Marco Polo. Now the bad news: this story - all 7 episodes - does not exist in any video format, at least not that anyone is generally aware of (that DVD cover above is really just wishful thinking). In 2013 when wild rumours about a huge haul of missing Doctor Who episodes were making the internet rounds Marco Polo was one of the titles mentioned, with the bold claim that it has been found in its entirety. When a total of 9 episodes were announced - all of them from the 1968 season of the show - there was a huge sense of disappointment that Marco Polo was still somewhere out there, although the next batch of rumours suggested that it was indeed found and was being withheld from release so as not to totally blot out the 50th anniversary of the series. Then the rumour changed to the episode had been "located" but not found as whoever held it realized how much it would be worth and was now demanding much more for it. The latest one I read indicated that a copy of it was found but it was not salvageable, missing sound and being of poor visual quality. I first enjoyed the story in a Target paperback, but the actual broadcast story is not entirely lost to us: the BBC Radio Collection released the entire story from an off-air recording on audio CD with bridging narration by William Russell. Brilliant move, really; like a radio play the tale can be enjoyed with imagination filling in the visual details. The excerpts from Polo's journal work well in this format, adding a certain something to the storytelling. It says a lot about the series when it can overcome the loss of some episodes by jumping formats and being just as enjoyable. Versatility like this is what would lead to other media offshoots such as webcasts, special episodes recorded just for radio broadcasts, the Big Finish audios, the Telos novellas, and the Virgin Publishing New Adventures and Missing Adventures novels.

And speaking of those...

NEXT EPISODE : THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE

The Edge of Destruction

Right after takeoff from Skaro, the TARDIS breaks down in mid flight. The console room plunges into darkness and the Doctor and his companions are flung to the floor. As they recover they find they have lost parts of their memories and the Doctor and Susan feel as if they have been hit across the back of the neck. Barbara and Ian fear that something has forced its way into the TARDIS, but the Doctor begins to suspect that his new human companions are to blame. As paranoia begins to set in the travelers realize that they are in terrible danger, facing imminent destruction, and they have to put aside suspicion or die.

It's a bit of a gamble so early in a new series to take the regular cast and strand them together like strangers trapped in an elevator between floors. Usually this is the sort of thing an established series will attempt to bring some plot elements to a head and force out a solution. And it is a short story by comparison to the previous ones; just two episodes as opposed to four for Child and seven for The Daleks. But this works out very well, drawing the regulars to their limits and building the tension between them to breaking point. The TARDIS is not the only thing on the edge of being destroyed - it's the unity of the crew. The Doctor unleashes his full fury at Ian and Barbara as he suspects that they have meddled with his craft; the arrogance and superiority that he first showed in An Unearthly Child is back with a vengeance, and all they have been through with the Tribe of Gum and the Daleks goes right out the window. Both humans react with indignation and outrage, but it is Barbara who really stands up to the Doctor, her patience with his ways at an end. Susan, too, begins to suspect that Barbara and Ian are to blame, and we are reminded that she is not human when her cold edge emerges; given the chance she could be just as alien and cold as the Doctor.

The Edge of Destruction also brings a whole new dimension to the TARDIS itself; at first it was shown as a safe haven, a refuge from the rest of the universe and more than just a travel machine - a home. Once the lights go out and the constant hum of the machines that keep it running is gone, it all changes. The dark corners of the rooms and corridors become menacing, and we are shown more of them including a sleeping area and a sort of living room outside it where the food machine can be found. There are slight modifications to the set since The Daleks but nothing major - indeed the console room and the TARDIS layout will visibly change up over the next few adventures. The Target novelization of the story has some additions to the narrative including some sequences with the Doctor and Ian venturing deeper into the TARDIS and exploring chambers not seen in the televised episodes. I read the novel after I had seen the serial on TV and I remember enjoying it, but had it been the other way around I am sure I would have been disappointed at the abbreviated video.

 It was not actually until I got the DVD that I saw the episodes in their entirety; the omnibus version I saw on WNED 17 was missing a few minutes of footage off the end of episode two, and the serialized versions I saw on YTV were missing the final seconds of episode two. The reason? The next adventure does not exist on any video format nor film, and the final episode of Edge promises next week's adventure to come. The DVD releases are the episodes restored to the way they were meant to be seen, preserving the integrity of the original, and even if the next episode is not around to be seen, it is indeed handy to be heard...

NEXT EPISODE : MARCO POLO

The Daleks

After escaping from the distant past, the TARDIS makes planetfall on a dead world where the plants are petrified, the animal life is gone and a vast alien city sits, apparently empty. Unbeknownst to the crew the planet is polluted with fallout from a neutron bomb, and when the Doctor engineers an expedition into the city they meet in its depths some of the survivors - the Daleks. The radiation from the war has caused the Daleks to mutate and retreat into well armed metal shells for survival, but their opponents in the war, the Thals, have mutated back into perfect humanoids and only desire to live in peace. With the Daleks ready to wage another war and exterminate the whole Thal race, the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan must join with the Thals and help them, or it is certain death for all.

It's no secret that An Unearthly Child was very promising, yet the series still lacked the big punch to get noticed and drag in the viewers. As soon as the first Daleks were seen on screen, the viewing figures skyrocketed to 10 million, and the series came into its own. Nowadays the Daleks of the current series are not as menacing as their 1960s ancestors, but at the time when nothing like them had ever been seen before their air of menace was new, their cruelty evoked not so distant memories of the German army of World War II.

When dealing with robots or species who have adopted a robotic guise it is always assumed that they have removed all emotions and that will be their downfall, blah blah blah... but with the Daleks it is not the case. They are not compassionate and loving by any stretch but they are filled with hatred and fear to motivate them to mercilessly wipe out an entire race. And they're clever, too; they use Susan and her connection to the Thal people to engineer a clever ruse to lead the Thals into a trap - a cowardly move by any stretch. The Daleks are the new schoolyard bully of the universe. They need someone to stand up to them.

Having already dealt with cave men Barbara and Ian are starting to adjust to the unusual and fantastic
- although Ian has accepted that the Doctor may not be able to return them to their own time. Barbara isn't going into crazy panic anymore but when the Doctor announces that they are definitely not on Earth, the look of defeat on her face says it all. But the group is starting to come together a bit more as they accept that they are companions "whether we like it or not" according to Ian. And while he and the Doctor argue and puff up their egos, the Doctor seems to be developing an admiration for Barbara and her clear-headed approach to things. She was the first to accept that they had traveled in time, and now she sides with the Doctor when it comes to the decision to convince the Thals to abandon their pacifist ways and fight the Daleks.  And while the crew spend time together on board the TARDIS we get to see some of what lies beyond the console room and the fault locator - the corridors and hallways go on at great length, and there is random furniture placed here and there (maybe in case someone needs a rest from walking all over the ship), and the fantastic food machine which is nothing less than pure convenience sci-fi, but better than taking pills or having a messy kitchen to clean up.

The Daleks introduces us to not one but two alien species; in contrast to the harsh machines with the grating voices are the soft-spoken, gentle and very fit Thals. Well, fit by 1960s standards anyways. In this age they'd all have abs on display no doubt but they are all blond and attractive - the ideal that Mr Hitler himself believed to be the vision of perfection, but the Daleks refer to them as "disgustingly mutated". We do get a teasing glimpse of the thing that lives inside a Dalek - a small clawed hand reaching out from under a cloak after the creature is pulled out of its machine and dumped on the floor. This isn't the visual we will come to associate with the Daleks in the future as we see more and more of them outside their cases, but they are a mutant race and as such will change, as will the appearance of their machines. And the Thals will be back, too, but not for quite some time. And they won't be as good looking.


NEXT EPISODE : THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION

An Unearthly Child

I remember the first time I ever saw an episode of Doctor Who. It was the end of the third episode of Terror of the Zygons; I was very small and very afraid and very eager to see what happened the next episode. I did not get to see An Unearthly Child until many years later when WNED 17 in Buffalo got the complete Doctor Who series and started showing them as Saturday afternoon omnibus movies, mushing all the individual episodes of a story together into one long spree. But despite the fact that I was seeing it from a more historical perspective and I was now older than the original target audience, I was still thrilled to hear the very first version of the familiar theme song and see the original opening sequence and logo.

The episode was first broadcast on Saturday 23 November 1963 and as it had such a distinct 60s feel about it there is not a lot of speculation that the series starts in a contemporary setting. Coal Hill School history teacher Barbara Wright confides with her colleague, science master Ian Chesterton, that one of her student, a girl named Susan Foreman, is a mystery to her; brilliant at times and at others painfully awkward. Ian has the same experience and together they decide to follow her home and speak to her grandfather about her progress at school. Susan's home address, however, leads the teachers to a scrap yard cluttered with discarded furniture and junk, and a modern London police box. The old man who arrives on scene after turns out to be Susan's grandfather, a man who only goes by the name "Doctor", and he is not pleased at the intrusion. The turn of events sees Ian and Barbara forcing their way past him into the police box, or the TARDIS - an impossible ship bigger on the inside than the outside - and together with the Doctor and Susan they are flung into the distant past of Earth to become pawns in a power struggle between two primitive men vying for control of the wretched Tribe of Gum.

I have heard and read so many first hand accounts of people who were there that first night and saw all this with young eyes and felt their imaginations come to life at the sight of the TARDIS. The Doctor does not come across as the hero immediately - rather than the friend to all humans he becomes in later years he is arrogant and sees the humans in his presence as nothing more than children at best, pests at worst. Susan, having spent more time among humans than the Doctor due to her enrollment at Coal Hill School is far less wary of them, but she is still very naive about the ways of the world, maybe even the universe; when she becomes separated from the Doctor she loses her composure and panics. Rightly so, really; this man is her only link to a planet they have fled with no real means to return. The TARDIS is not fully functional; despite all its gleam and polish inside it has lost the ability to camouflage itself with its surroundings and is stuck in the form of a police box, and the Doctor does not actually know how to control it, leaving all aboard mercy to chance landings.

The DVD of An Unearthly Child comes with the additional bonus of the unaired pilot version of the first episode (each episode has its own title like today, and four in total here are collectively called An Unearthly Child) which is really something to see. There are a few obvious technical issues in the studio with shadows of stagehands seen behind the TARDIS walls, doors which will not stay shut when closed, and flubs of lines and actors not on their marks. It's the overall tone of the pilot which I enjoyed seeing as a contrast; the shadows are deeper and darker and while William Hartnell's performance as the Doctor is still cold and aloof, Carole Ann Ford as Susan is markedly different  and comes across as a more menacing and disturbed girl in her Coal Hill School scenes. I can't help but wonder what the series would have been like if they maintained that darker edge. Barbara and Ian do not change between pilot and broadcast episodes, not much anyways. Neither of them are enamored with the Doctor's cold edge but while Ian argues with the old man, Barbara comes to learn to accept what she sees around her as the truth; their lives have been changed now, possibly for god, because there's no guarantee that the Doctor can take them back where they came from.

NEXT EPISODE : THE DALEKS

Prequel 2: Time and Relative

Set in the supposed spring of 1963, Time and Relative continues in the vein of Frayed to tell the story of the Doctor and Susan before we officially got to know them in November of the same year. This is another of the short-lived range of Telos Publishing novellas, this one published in 2001, and as with Frayed before it it's pretty damn good.

Time and Relative is told in a series of journal entries written by Susan herself, giving us a different perspective on an adventure with the Doctor and placing him almost as a secondary character. He is still, however, the star of the show even if he is not in it a great deal; Susan's thoughts often return to him and to their plight - exiles from somewhere else living in what she refers to as "the Box" in a junkyard in London's east end. Attempting to think too much about where they are from and how they got to Earth causes Susan blinding headaches, but she has bigger things to worry about: she's a teenage girl in the 60's.

Susan is doing her best to fit in at Coal Hill School, which means first and foremost not letting anyone cotton on that she is not like them. She speaks of her gal pal Gillian and their schoolgirl antics, of their sort-of friend John whom they ironically nickname "the Martian", of the peer pressure to do silly things and of schoolyard bullies and the whole wretched social pecking order that comes with being a teenager in any point in history.

To make matters worse, though, it's cold. It should be spring but London is still buried under a lot of snow and more keeps coming. People are blaming the Soviets, imagining that there is a freeze ray aimed at England. Susan has her own inklings that there is something else afoot but can't put her finger on it; it's just feelings at this point but her Grandfather is distracted and aloof, working to his own agenda. And then the snowmen start to come to life. And not in the happy jolly soul kind of way.

Like Frayed this is one best read after watching a few years' worth of episodes to pick up on the more subtle things that are done. Susan casually mentions her school dealings with her teachers Mr Chesteron and Miss Wright, and the scandal that is them being seen together outside of school hours. And there is the journey across a frozen snow-entombed London which references locations in and around Coal Hill School which will be seen in an adventure from 1988 but set in 1963.

Telling the story from Susan's first-person narrative gives so much more depth to the tale as opposed to normal narration. Case in point: the TARDIS is only vaguely referenced as a time space machine, as Susan takes it pretty much for granted and doesn't feel the need to go into its physics in her own journal; it's Earth which is the alien environment when it is told from her perspective. And although Susan can't really say where she is from she knows enough to see the differences between her ordered society back Home vs the way the Humans go about their lives with the single hearts, their emotions, their ignorance of their place in the universe. Susan compares the predicament of herself and her Grandfather to what would happen if someone were to play truant from school and have a Truant Officer come after them, one of the Masters in particular strikes a chord with her if she thinks about it enough.

Did I like it? Hell yes, this is through and through a Doctor Who story. Under the Telos rules it can be told differently and is at times a lot more frightening than some of the adventures in the televised series. If this was what was broadcast one can imagine the screams of horror from Mary Whitehouse and her breed at the violent images of wholesale slaughter in the London streets. 11 years after Time and Relative was published the current series did something similar and, well... not as effective.

And I found another CD cover version of it online, almost as if it's begging to be picked up and made into an audio version.

C'mon Big Finish...

Prequel 1: Frayed

Back in the classic era of Doctor Who there were really just two ways to enjoy the series: you either watched it on TV or you read the story in one of the many many many novelizations published by Target Books. Given that there were a lot of televised episodes missing (and there still are today) a lot of fans never even saw some of the earlier episodes and had to rely on the novelizations to fill in the gaps, to give us an idea of what we were missing. By the time I got to see the old black and white era episodes I had read the novelized versions of most of them; some were about on par with Target's standard practice of telling the adventure in under 140 pages, but then there would be others where the author was allowed to go a bit beyond what was seen on TV and maybe add something that was scripted and never made it to broadcast. It was in these embellishments and changes that the next level of Doctor Who was seeded, and eventually we as fans got what we had always wanted: new adventures in print.

New material was called just that, The New Adventures, and they were started by Virgin Publishing in 1991 and they picked up where the televised series had ended in late 1989, taking the current Doctor as played by Sylvester McCoy to new places, with new companions and new monsters. In 1994 Virgin branched out and gave the same treatment to the previous incarnations of the Doctor with The Missing Adventures. And in 2001 the BBC extended a license to Telos Publishing to create their own series of hardcover Doctor Who novellas, although the Telos run was ended after only 15 tales. Eventually the BBC cancelled Virgin's license as well and all the printed Doctor Who material flowed from BBC Books, although Big Finish was able to publish their own books eventually.

The original fiction of Telos and Virgin allowed imagination to run a bit wild but still stay within the bounds of what should be a Doctor Who story. New authors who were not necessarily part of the BBC stable came forward with their takes on the show and shared what some purists call non-canon speculation - possibly labelled so harshly because some of the storytelling was new, gritty, scary and innovative and those not really wanting to look beyond their TV screens didn't like that. For all my complaining about new directions in the televised show lately, I actually adored these novels, almost all of them, for the fact that they broke out of the confines of TV and built on what we knew, or in the case of Frayed, what we did not know.

Frayed takes place before the televised series, before the Doctor and his grand-daughter Susan are the people we will meet in a tale of curious school teachers and a police box in a junkyard. Here they are travellers, explorers, with a fully functioning TARDIS but before it is named such. There is no police box, there are no Daleks, just an old man and a young girl who calls him "grandfather".

Despite the "reset" of the protagonists this is pretty much a normal Doctor Who story through and through with the Doctor and Susan becoming separated and allowing the reader to see the tale unfold from two perspectives - three if you count that of the rest of the cast, who are under attack by forces unknown only called "the foxes" on an alien planet where children with a genetic predisposition towards difficult behavior are warehoused and eventually, hopefully, cured.

Is this a good place to start for a new fan? No, honestly, it is not. The significance of a lot of smaller points are lost on a fresh reader, the quirks of the Doctor's speech and body language are better suited to be enjoyed after seeing William Hartnell's portrayal on screen. A science fiction fan, however, would certainly enjoy the technological edge of the story, the wild environment of the planet and the claustrophobic facility where the bulk of the tale takes place. But where the Doctor Who content of the novella is concerned it's pretty much best viewed in retrospect, much like the Companion Chronicles audio series made by Big Finish which take place within this pre-series universe.

But I liked it, I liked it a lot. And now that Big Finish have been picking up the Virgin novels for adaptation into audio, maybe they will pick up some of these as well...

(image of possible audio cover nicked from online, it's not mine, but I think it looks great).