The Rocket Men

From the safety of home, back on Earth, Ian remembers an adventure on the planet Jobis where he, the Doctor, Vicki and Barbara came to spend some time on the floating city Platform Five. There they chance to marvel at the achievement of a floating city in the clouds and the creatures which dwell there, until they are set upon by a brute named Ashman and his fanatical followers, the Rocket Men. Separated from the Doctor and outnumbered by jet packed thugs, Ian, Barbara and Vicki must endure the wrath of Ashman as he plans to subjugate the planet to his will, and try to survive.

The Rocket Men may have a bit of a cheesy title but this was actually a really cool story. Author John Dorney said he had deliberately written something which although felt like it could have been included in those first two seasons of the show would never have been attempted for the sheer impossible demands it would have had on visual effects work. Hovering space platforms, men flying with jetpacks, and massive manta ray creatures in flight... no, that would have just sent the BBC Effects department off the deep end, taking the budget for the next few stories with it. But what's really great about The Rocket Men is the visuals it creates through narrative and dialogue; everything can be imagined quite easily without it being described in excessive detail. It may help, though, to draw inspiration for Platform Five from either the floating city of the Hawk Men in the de Laurentis version of Flash Gordon or Bespin's Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back. The Rocket Men themselves are inspired, at least design-wise, by the Disney film The Rocketeer with their helmets and flight jackets.

The narrative of the tale is told by Ian again, and when the story opens he and Barbara and Vicki are already in danger, but his recanting of their adventure goes back and forth between past and present tenses until it catches up with itself halfway through episode two. And as far as dialogue pieces go this one is by far the most  in depth Big Finish have gotten on the Barbara / Ian romance story, with Ian realizing when he "knew", and the insane lengths he would go to keep Barbara safe. Set sometime after the events of The Romans (and thereby after The Web Planet) Ian's realization would have come at about the same time as Barbara's did in The Eleventh Tiger, with both of them seeing the other in peril (here it is Barbara being tossed out an air lock, for her it was Ian beaten to a senseless pulp) and knowing that their life would not be the same without the other.

Ashman and his lot seem a bit familiar aside from the Rocketeer imagery and I am more apt to liken them to a group of Madalorians called Death Watch in the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated series. The jet pack is a given but the sheer ruthlessness and brutality is comparable, and given that the series was in full swing at this time one has to wonder if this was some of the inspiration for this group of pirates and thieves.

The future with Barbara is still ahead of Ian, but he still has tales from the past to share...

NEXT EPISODE: THE WANDERER