The Daleks' Master Plan (episodes 8 - 12)

When the Daleks discover that the taranium element they recovered from the Doctor is a fake they dispatch another of their time machines from Skaro to once more track the TARDIS through time and space to get it back. The Doctor realizes that the Daleks would eventually be after him, but they are not the only ones, as the Monk appears looking for revenge. But while the Doctor must outwit a second foe, the alliance assembled by the Daleks is starting to waver, with Mavic Chen himself teetering on the edge of megalomania and the fate of the universe itself hanging in the balance.

I think the break provided by Big Finish's new material served its purpose well; with the threat of the Daleks left behind for a while we got to know the TARDIS crew a lot better, in particular Sara Kingdom, before the pace was once more hectic. Having Sara come into her own as a proper companion makes her eventual death that much more poignant... because it's no secret that Sara is the next casualty of the Dalek plan. She doesn't necessarily go as heroically as Katarina, but nevertheless her death is felt by Steven most of all, which would allow for Big Finish's attempt to play with the formation of a relationship between the two of them. When Steven tallies up the dead - Katarina, Bret, and now Sara - his grief is there for all to see (or in this case hear because only episode 10 exists to be seen). The Doctor? He calls all this death "a waste".

This part of the epic is really just borrowed from The Chase but thankfully is nowhere near as lame or as long. The TARDIS lands at a cricket match and its presence is narrated away by the observing radio commentators who try to make sense of its presence in a very calm and British sort of way. There's only one more stop, which is in Egypt, where the shifty Monk tries to ally himself with Chen and the Daleks to get his revenge on the Doctor and ends up with another serving of comeuppance. I'm not sure if the Monk was really necessary; I think he was supposed to provide some comic relief,
or the incidental music in his scenes seems to suggest that he was. After episode 7's lapse into hilarity, though, I'm not entirely sure that was needed, unless it was to take some of the edge off the Daleks and Chen who are actually pretty nasty and brutal this time around. But why wouldn't they be? They're pissed. Without the taranium there's no time destructor, and Chen is always quick to point out that if it had not been for him there would be no taranium. You can see and hear the Daleks barely tolerating his presence, and you know it's not going to end well for him once they get that taranium back.

As with the first portion of the story it's almost all on audio, save for episode 10, which makes for good car ride material or just something to enjoy with your tea or what have you. First time I got the sense of the serial, though, was the second volume of John Peel's novelization under the title The Mutation of Time  back in the 90s. Intriguingly it featured a red Dalek on the front which did not appear at all in the televised serial, but hey it made for a very striking novel cover and a custom action figure idea in later years. A few action figures as it happens.

NEXT EPISODE : THE MASSACRE OF ST BARTHOLOMEW'S EVE

An Ordinary Life

It's London in the 1950s and the TARDIS makes an emergency landing. The Doctor is unwell and Steven and Sara find themselves locked out of the TARDIS with no idea how to care for him until they are taken in by the Newman family. The Newmans are recent immigrants from the West Indies and face their own challenges as newcomers in an age where racial tensions are high, so taking in three strangers would be the last thing expected of them when they have themselves to look after. But without the Doctor and the TARDIS, Steven and Sara must learn for themselves what it means to be strangers in a strange land.

There is of course a sci fi story in there eventually, a very much Invasion of the Bodysnatchers inspired plot in the background, but the original intent was to actually remove science fiction from the plot altogether and make a purely modern historical tale out of this one. While listening to the tale I did not know it was coming, and when there were muttered chants of "we are coming" from mindless masses at the climax of episode twoI thought this was somehow linked to a Torchwood episode, but that was set in 1965 so no go. There was indeed something else coming, which although as I said was not exactly an original concept was still a good one and realized quite well on audio. If this had been a simple Companion Chronicle release then it could have easily been a tale of racism in a not so distant past in two episodes but it would hardly have warranted the full cast treatment and something would have been lost in that. No, this worked out best. I'm just a bit wary of how this is the second tale in this era of Sara with the crew where the TARDIS is once again malfunctioning to such a degree as the crew need to abandon it as a premise.

Steven and Sara only have brief knowledge of the Earth in this time, and Sara's is only what she experienced recently when the TARDIS made a series of short stops over Christmas in Liverpool and Hollywood, and she is not entirely keen. There's a bit more about Sara here now that there's more chance for her to act independently; it is revealed that when she signed on for Space Security detail she waived any notions of having children (whether this is voluntary sterilization of a vow of chastity is not revealed), and she gets to show an unexpected gentle side when caring for the Newmans' baby girl. Steven is getting to know Sara a bit more as the threat of the Daleks has lessened a bit, but the notion of being stuck in the past on Earth (and he knows that they are not exactly alone - Ian and Barbara are not far away geographically but not in the right order) has replaced it. Still, he muses about what it might be like to stay here. The two of them. Yes the unlikely romance is still there in the background - I suppose since it happens in the new series it needs to happen here too? It was brushed on in The Anachronauts and I had hoped it was going to be a fleeting thing.

The new team of the Doctor, Sara and Steven is turning into quite the ensemble, even if they know they will have to face the Daleks again as long as they are carrying the Taranium core of the Time Destructor. If nothing else it cements Sara as more of a companion now than before with only two visual episodes left to see her in; the Big Finish material is expanding nicely on her mythology. Next year there's a further collection of Early Adventures from the Hartnell era and there is one slated with Jean Marsh as Sara and Peter Purves as Steven (and doing an excellent turn once again as the Doctor) but alas not in time to be included in this journey... otherwise we would see how the clone race called Sontarans would have fared against the crew.

But with the supplemental material finished, it's time to rejoin the television series after some time has passed...

NEXT EPISODE: THE DALEKS' MASTERPLAN (episodes 8 - 12)

The Anachronauts

Steven remembers how shortly after he, Sara and the Doctor toasted Christmas Day together their momentary respite from the Daleks came to a crashing halt; another time travelling ship collided with the TARDIS and dropped both crews on a strange world's beach. The two crews combine forces to survive in the alien environment but there is never a complete bond of trust; the Doctor is wary of the strange crew and their attempts to master the realm that his own people view as exclusively theirs, and the leader of the other crew, Natalie, eyes the Doctor with equal suspicion and some envy when she realizes what the TARDIS could represent. Steven and Sara soon find themselves in Berlin on the wrong side of the wall as captives, and they have to make some terrible choices in order to survive.

The was the first Companion Chronicle where Steven and Sara were paired up to provide the narrative and dialogue to tell the tale, with Peter Purves and Jean Marsh doing such a good job you can't help but wish they'd done this sort of thing back in the sixties. Sara is still hard edged as a Space Security agent even if her beliefs in the system have been shaken to the core by Mavic Chen's betrayal. Steven is still young and impatient and looks back upon Sara with something akin to regret, wondering if things could have been different between them. The Doctor certainly seems to think that there could be, and advises Sara at one point to spend time with Steven and talk to him, and make the most of their time together. The sly old fox. And in the face of possibly losing the TARDIS forever, he is surprisingly coy when it comes to Steven and Sara, perhaps as a means to avoid thinking too much about the loss of his ship. Finding the food machine sitting on its own on the island would seem to confirm that the skip was lost forever, although the absence of other debris leaves the point open.

Despite having owned this audio for quite some time I had not listened to it until now, and when I got to the closing moments of episode 2 I thought that the story was over and that the second disc was just going to be a heap of interviews and extras. Not so! Suddenly it's somewhere else and Steven and Sara are on their own without the Doctor or Natalie and her crew, leaving me wondering if this was going to take the story to a bad disjointed place. As it turns out I need to learn to have more faith in the style of Simon Guerrier - there was nothing to worry about, and the air of menace which had permeated the first two episodes was back.

Placing the tale in the middle of The Daleks' Master Plan was a bit of a gamble given that I wasn't sure if it might give away the ending of that adventure (even though I already knew it), but the fates of everyone were left alone so a first time listener if they were to pursue the series the way I am doing would not have the end spoiled for them. Steven's point of perspective is not revealed, either, so it's not as if this story needs to be placed in sequence after he leaves the TARDIS in future. There were, however, a couple elements of the story that are obviously borrows from the future of the series... the Doctor makes reference to how horrific it would be for a war to be fought across time (which happens in the new series of 2005) and the actual physical destruction of the TARDIS comes from not only the broadcast episode Frontios but owes a lot to the novel Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible. But when it comes to the more immediate future of the Doctor and company, Sara is forbidden to know the fate of Mavic Chen and the outcome of the Dalek plan to conquer the solar system. Tidy, that.

So far so good for the expanded universe adventures of the Doctor, Steven and Sara.

NEXT EPISODE: AN ORDINARY LIFE

The Daleks' Master Plan (episodes 1 - 7)

Alternative cover from DeviantArt

Fearing for Steven's life after he was wounded at Troy, the Doctor goes looking for help. The TARDIS lands on the planet Kembel, where months earlier Marc Cory was murdered by the Daleks, ensuring that their plot to attack the solar system with the help of hostile systems stayed secret. Space Agent Bret Vyon has come looking for Cory and joins with the Doctor, Steven and Katarina as they steal a vital component of the Daleks' doomsday device - the time destructor - and go on the run not only from the Daleks but from Guardian of the Solar System Mavic Chen, the traitor from Earth who has sided with the Daleks. The pursuit across the galaxy sees both Bret and Katarina killed, and Space Agent Sara Kingdom joining the fight against the Daleks and her own government's highest official.

Massive is a word that comes to mind when one mentions The Daleks' Master Plan as it was until 1986 the longest adventure in the series at 12 episodes (13 if Mission to the Unknown is included). The goal was to make a space opera type of adventure and it succeeded alright, and it gave the audiences of the time all the Daleks they could handle as they were in every episode aside from episode 7. That episode in itself was noteworthy as the very first Christmas episode, being broadcast on December 25 of that year, and served to take a break from the horrors of the Dalek plan, and in the final moments of the serial William Hartnell famously broke the fourth wall by wishing the viewers at home a happy Christmas.

This one not only broke the record for longest (at the time) but was also the first adventure to see a companion die; Katarina was the first series companion casualty at only five episodes. Her status as a companion is a bit shaky given that she did not really stay that long, and after bringing her on board as a historical character saved from the sacking of Troy the writers quickly realized that they were not going to be able to do much with her given her lack of knowledge about ... well, anything. This isn't to say she was stupid or necessarily naive, but she just had no comprehension of anything she was seeing and believed that she was actually dead and the Doctor was transporting her to a place of perfection. So they blew her out of an air lock.

Bret Vyon on the other hand, lasted only one episode less than Katarina and was gunned down aiding the Doctor and Steven in escaping from Earth security, and he gets no companion status. Not to worry, though; actor Nicholas Courtney would be back in a few years in one of the most memorable roles in the series next to the Doctor himself. But Vyon's mission is to find out what happened to Marc Cory and his crew, and after initially distrusting the Doctor and company joins up once the Dalek threat is revealed.

The big disappointing thing about this one is as usual the lack of available visual material; out of 12 episodes there are only 3 left - episodes 2, 5 and 10 - and a handful of clips. The audio exists as well but it's a really long listen in one go unless you are on a long car ride somewhere, like through New Brunswick, and you desperately need the distraction. Episode 2 was the most recent one from this serial to be found and when it was it revealed a few things had changed on Kembel that wouldn't get noticed on audio: the Dalek base was now bigger and the lineup of alien delegates had changed, with only two of the originals now on set. Gone was the tall mystery creature I liked in Mission to the Unknown and in here more humanoid things, including one bald creature in a bodysuit covered in large round lesions.

The lineup, from DeviantArt once again

Given that I was going to have to jump between DVD and MP3 to enjoy this story, I decided to split my enjoyment into two chunks, stopping at episode 7 after the Christmas pause for a couple of reasons, the biggest of which is about new companion Sara Kingdom who is introduced in episode 5.

Like Katarina before her, Sara does not get a long innings as a companion, and she'll be gone by the end of this one. When the script was made into another so-so novel by lacklustre author John Peel he claimed to have deliberately broken the story into two parts so the time with Sara on the TARDIS crew might get fleshed out better by future writers, although at the time there was not a lot of mention of original  fiction in the works (and Target Books did not want to publish a supersized novel anyway). It was not until Big Finish came along and twigged to that notion and started including Sara in their range, recruiting the wonderful Jean Marsh to reprise the role alongside Peter Purves as Steven Taylor. But what we know about Sara from her first couple episodes is that she is fiercely loyal to her commission in Space Security and will do anything to uphold the law. The revelation that her own commander in chief is a traitor and has aligned with the most evil beings in the universe throws her for a loop and the Doctor and Steven offer her a chance to redeem her blind following and do some good.
Doctor Who


So with the Daleks temporarily behind then, the new TARDIS crew resume their travels together...

NEXT EPISODE: THE ANACHRONAUTS

The Unwinding World

On a distant colony world, the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki have been separated from the TARDIS for about three months. In that time they have become part of the society of that world while they work at getting the ship back so they can leave. In that time, though, they notice that this world is full of flaws as systems break down and things fall apart, but the people by and large do not notice or care - they go to work, they eat, they watch TV and the next day they repeat. There is a subversive element at work as well, spray painting slogans on public property, but as fast as the slogans go up they are removed by robot workers. It's obvious that someone is controlling all of this, but it's hard to figure out who when nobody is complaining.

As with Starborn this is another Companion Chronicle without the storytelling hindsight of Vicki's years away from the TARDIS, it is made to fit in alongside the original series episodes, somewhere between The Web Planet and The Crusades. Or somewhere convenient. There is mention of the crew having lived in Rome for a while but no other references to place the tale more precisely. But while there are no direct mentions of this crew's past adventures, there are a lot of mentions of the future adventures of the Doctor with the TARDIS pegged as a subversive symbol on other worlds, even if its configuration is slightly different in those instances. Sneaky.

Thematically this story is a lot of technical than others of its era would have been. Vicki is quite the computer whiz all of a sudden, even if the computers themselves are old by her own perspective. Barbara and Ian are not computer savvy as they had no such things in their time and have to take manual labour jobs to be able to afford the small flat they have all been living in since they arrived. The whole thing is being overseen by a robot/computer system called Connie, who sounds like the sort of HR person you don't entirely trust.... oh she's polite enough and asks the right questions but there's this underlying sense of menace to her voice... but then again why wouldn't there be? Vicki and her friends have no real records of living here, they've just shown up out of nowhere and fabricated their existence while actively inquiring with the authorities about the whereabouts of their property, which is in the form of a subversive symbol. The bulk of this story is actually told with mere dialogue between Vicki and Connie and minimal amounts of additional voices, and plenty of sound effects to help things along.

Here's a sticking point to consider though, and I was only really slightly aware of this until someone else put in into words: the Doctor and company seem bound to start a revolt against whatever is going on here, but their motivation seems questionable: are they doing it so they can survive, or are they doing it just because they can? And when it comes down to it, there might be other things going on that they have not considered. Lessons to learn; you don't just go around leaving civilizations turned on their heads...

NEXT EPISODE: THE DALEKS' MASTER PLAN (episodes 1 - 7)

Starborn

The TARDIS is on 20th century Earth and Vicki has put her foot in it, unintentionally insulting Barbara by saying she didn't view the 20th century as any more civilized than Nero's Rome. Keeping her distance to let things cool down Vicki encounters a fortune teller with a message from her future about the dangers of where she will land next, and a dire warning not to get into the TARDIS again. Vicki is skeptical and thinks the woman to be a charlatan and demands to know exactly who this warning comes from. And it appears to be a warning from Vicki herself.

My first gripe about this one is the timing; it's not the usual Companion Chronicle format of a tale told after the companion has left, this one is made to drop into the flow of actual series events. That's all fine if it can be done easily, but for some reason this one is designed to pick up right at the end of The Romans. Mention is made of how the TARDIS was gripped by some force but the Doctor managed to break free of it for this little sideline adventure (David A. McIntee's Eleventh Tiger was placed in the same spot as well)  but it's done so carelessly... the force that was unbreakable was that of the Animus on Vortis, taking the story right into The Web Planet, but the tension that was created by that cliffhanger is undermined by this sort of freewheeling license to interrupt the continuity. It's such a recent escape from that power that as the cover indicates the crew are still in their Roman garb while on the streets of a more modern London. One might argue that this creates a sort of story arc with the TARDIS being pursued by the force of the Animus and pulled at constantly until it is finally ensnared, but that would require a serious feat of retconning.

My second complaint is the story told by "future" Vicki through the seance. The TARDIS would, supposedly, go to a planet where the people were born to ascend into the heavens quite literally and join an intricate pattern of stars in the sky and keep the world below brightly lit forever. The world of these luminous beings is so bright that the Doctor and company have to wear protective face shields to protect their eyes from damage. Sounds a bit familiar... yes, we've heard this sort of thing before in the Lost Stories range with The Dark Planet.

These stories with information from the future coming to the present cast have to be handled carefully and although author Jacqueline Rayner made a good effort here it's not her best work. I found myself just getting a bit bored with the tale and wondering if it was supposed to be a comedy during the seance parts, all those voice changes to simulate contact from beyond. And when the final truth behind what was going on finally came out and resolution was attempted, I was left thinking "meh". Someone has been watching too much of the new Steven Moffat series drivel, I think.

So this is really my first less than enthusiastic reaction to a Big Finish audio. Let's see if they can redeem themselves to me...

NEXT EPISODE: THE UNWINDING WORLD

Frostfire

In Carthage in 1164 BC, years after she has left the TARDIS, Vicki is enjoying her life with Troilus as much as she can. Oh she's happy enough with him but every now and again she sounds a bit remorseful, as if she hadn't thought it through properly and reality only came after she saw the ship leave the burning of Troy. Now she pays a visit to someone and tells of an adventure she had before coming to Troy, and adventure which took her to London in 1814 at the time of the frost fair on the river Thames. Together with the Doctor and Steven she met Jane Austen and an alien from another world which used the cold to spread its influence and power.

This was actually the very first Companion Chronicle ever made and with a Marc Platt script they made the right choice to get things going. This is actually the way I prefer to hear them told, giving us not only a glimpse of a take we did not see but also showing us where the companions are now that they have moved on. The Ian Chesterton set did a fantastic job in that respect, and the current set of Vicki based adventures (only three right now) may do the same, although I have not enjoyed the others yet. Soon. The story is simple enough though, with an alien menace in Regency London, but exactly how it connects to Vicki's "present" in 1164 BC is what makes the story that much more interesting. There's no obvious continuity collisions with this story and any others in the period it's set in; if it were a standalone tale I'd say it would be just as at home between Galaxy Four and The Myth Makers as it is here told in retrospect.

Jane Austen is a puzzling choice for this one, but not a bad one in the end. Marc Platt must be a fan, as he could have just as easily made up a period character to mix with the TARDIS crew although Ms Austen's social standing makes it easy for Vicki, the Doctor and Steven to mix with the right crowd to stay close to a mysterious alien egg that has aroused interest at the fair. And while Steven is beeing oohed and ahhed over by the ladies of the time, the Doctor manages to take a successful turn on the dance floor.

Thematically there's this mention of the cold that would not go, and it's much akin to the creeping cold of the Time and Relative novel, not to mention the 2012 Christmas episode The Snowmen. Seems winter can be just as evil as autumn; that will be back as a theme in later episodes of course.

NEXT EPISODE: STARBORN

The Myth Makers

The TARDIS lands on the battlefields of Asia Minor, and within seconds of its landing the Doctor, Steven and Vicki witness on the scanner a brutal fight between Achilles and Hector, resulting in Hector's death. The Doctor is heralded as a manifestation of Zeus and taken in by the Greeks - until Agamemnon doesn't believe him. Steven alternates between captured by the Greeks and then by the Trojans in his attempts to free first the Doctor, and then Vicki, the latter who has been taken into Troy inside the TARDIS and then hailed a the prophetess Cressida when she emerges. Vicki is heading for her destiny, while the city of Troy is headed for trouble.

As with The Romans script writer Donald Cotton has flung the TARDIS crew back into mythology rather than history and is once more writing it as a comedy. It's hard to say exactly how successful this might have been at its original broadcast as none of the four episodes exist on film, so whatever sight gags and physical comedy cues there were are lost. What's left are the audio tracks for the episodes and a few clips here and there to at least capture the dialogue between the characters, as well as some excessive music from the fight scenes. Still, what can be heard is pretty funny, especially when the Trojan prince, Paris, seeks Achilles out for revenge after Hector's death and whispers his challenge rather than yelling it to avoid attracting any attention... and when he instead encounters Steven he tries to avoid a fight by blustering his way out. It's a bit hard to credit that this guy kidnapped Helen and caused the 10 year siege of Troy in the first place - a siege that Helen's husband, Meneleus, is actually bored with as he doesn't seem to want his wife back and is tired of always running after her. But this is about honour, and the Greeks are in it to win, it's just taking a bit of time. The Trojans are feeling a bit cooped up after 10 years but are otherwise coping, but they are always wary of the Greeks trying to get into the city. None is more suspicious than Cassandra, daughter of King Priam, who literally spits her lines out in her hatred of the Greeks, and when Vicki is introduced as a rival prophetess it does not go over well at all.

Awwwwww...

Vicki's presence does go well, however, with young prince Troilus, who is taken with her at first sight. Vicki herself is wooed by Troilus and at first flirts with him shamelessly to get herself in good with the Trojans and then to get Troilus to release her from imprisonment. This draws a bit of ire - jealousy? - from Steven when he sees Vicki using her feminine wiles for her own ends, but really, who knew she had them in the first place? Vicki falls in love with Troilus and at the end of the story stays with him amid the ruins of Troy, pledging to help him rebuild and to stay with him. It's all a bit unlikely and sudden, but Maureen O'Brien's departure from the series itself was sudden as well; she had reportedly mentioned she might be keen to move on from Doctor Who at the conclusion of the previous season's shooting, and when the third season began she returned to discover that she got what she wanted and was out, much to her surprise.

Is the Doctor surprised that she is gone? He hardly sees her the whole adventure; after he is taken in by the Greeks and press-ganged to help them defeat the Trojans within 2 days he does not see Vicki until Troy is being sacked and danger is all around. In revisionist land one of the previous BBC Books Novels has the Doctor realizing that Vicki has her own destiny, so her departure should not come as a shock to him. There is, however, no real departure speech between the two, so we can't know if the Doctor accepts her reasons to leave or if he goes off on a tear like when Ian and Barbara chose to leave him. There is too much going on at the time for him to be worried about it, perhaps; Troy is burning and Steven is wounded in battle, and Vicki gets one of Cassandra's handmaidens, a girl named Katarina, to help get Steven into the TARDIS. The ship leaves with her on board taking Vicki's place, although Katarina believes she has died and the Doctor is taking her to the afterlife.

When I first got to enjoy The Myth Makers it was obviously not on television but in print as a Target novel, with Donald Cotton himself writing the tale down as he did with The Romans. The novel is told from the point of view of the Cyclops character, a one eyed spy who spends his time traipsing back and forth between the Green camps and Troy, seemingly going anywhere unchallenged and witnessing the whole adventure (well, with one eye anyway). It was funny enough on its own in print, and it's just a shame that the whole thing is not available to enjoy. But as it is said of the other missing stories, better the audio than nothing at all, yes?

NEXT EPISODE: FROSTFIRE

The Bounty of Ceres

When the Doctor stranded the Monk in 1066 he removed the dimensional control from his foe's TARDIS, shrinking the inside until it fit proportionally with its smaller exterior shell. The Doctor attempts to fit the same device into his own ship to generate more space inside but the experiment goes disastrously wrong and he, Steven and Vicki are forced to abandon ship. They find themselves on a mining outpost on Ceres, a body withing the asteroid belt of the solar system, and they are immediately suspected to sabotaging the base's operations. The Doctor suspects that there is more going on and one of the crew is in mortal fear of "her" wrath, believing that there is some entity at large on Ceres with designs on wiping them all out.

This is one of Big Finish's Early Adventures episodes, like Domain of the Voord and The Doctor's Tale, written to be a full cast audio rather than a half-narrated Companion Chronicle. Whereas the two previous adventures of this banner attempted to maintain a similar style of storytelling to the relative era of the show they were set in, Ceres is a firm departure from that, going further into technical science fiction and telling a grittier harsher tale. Themes of claustrophobia, isolation and fear and evoked, reminiscent of sci fi films like Alien and newer series episodes such as The Impossible Planet and The Waters of Mars. The Doctor and company are dropped right into this one and mesh perfectly into the setting, with Steven and Vicki realizing that the events they are witnessing are in their relative pasts but obscure enough that they do not know if what is going on is part of something bigger in the web of time.

The three staffers on the base are what you would expect all the way out there alone: they're wary and a bit frightened, suspicious and paranoid. The systems that should protect them are breaking down. Quershi sticks to her routines and facts, finding comfort in procedure. Moreland is not so quietly going nuts, hearing voices and staying just this side of a full blown meltdown. And Thorn is the token cool one, accepting that there is a problem and remaining open to suggestions about what it is yet not really welcoming any. The TARDIS crew have the usual sorts of trouble with this lot: they're captured, stunned, locked up, released, not trusted... you know, the usual things that happen when they try to help. They have no choice but to attempt to survive with the crew; with the TARDIS out of commission they are dead if they do not.

Continuity wise there are no direct leads from any other adventure, nor are there any into the next, so Big Finish can continue to bring Peter Purves and Maureen O'Brien back together repeatedly and keep building their adventures in this space between broadcast stories (the upcoming Ravelli Conspiracy would be next but is not to be released until November of this year). The TARDIS team sound as if they are well into their groove as a unit, with Steven and Vicki adopting a brother and sister type of bond, squabbling a lot but still doing what the Doctor tells them (or yells at them). Purves performs in place of William Hartnell once again like only he can (he manages to still sound like a twentysomething Steven Taylor in one breath and a cranky old man the next), and it's like the Doctor is right there in the studio with them.

But as there are no more audios for this section, we're headed back to the televised episodes once more, and Vicki is headed for her destiny...

NEXT EPISODE: THE MYTH MAKERS

Etheria

Separated from the TARDIS, the Doctor and Vicki are in the company of a hunter on a distant planet on a quest to reunite with Steven and save him from kidnapping pirates. The area of the planet they must traverse is saturated with a thick fog which causes anyone who breathes it in to hallucinate and sleepwalk. But there's more to this situation, the Doctor believes. Neither he nor Vicki can actually remember arriving here, which makes them wonder who their guide actually is, and where they are actually going.

This is another short trip adventure narrated by Peter Purves without actually stepping into his role as Steven Taylor. Etheria is not even an hour long but certainly feels like it is given the complexity of the script. The short trips range doesn't have much to it beyond straight narration, a very bare bones approach to storytelling although there is incidental music and sound effects to go with it. Purves tells the story well, he's not a struggle to listen to as he goes through the material. And the story itself fits into the format very well; I was wondering as I listened to it and saw the time time creeping towards the 35 minute mark if there was going to be some rushed botched ending, but hurrah there was not! The beginning of the story is only referenced as we join the action somewhere in the middle of the tale - works best for working with a shorter format of story. There are no really big references to series continuity in the story so it's a comfortable enough place to drop it and stretch out that gap between Mission to the Unknown and The Myth Makers to make it feel like more time is passing before the Doctor himself lands on Kembel as the unfortunate Marc Cory did. Another success from Big Finish.

And speaking of success from Big Finish, I listened to this one on my phone in the kitchen while I did dishes today. I'm one of the 30 beta testers for their new app and I have not encountered any major issues with it. Well done to them, I say; so much handier to just download the adventures from their cloud to my phone rather than mess around with file transfers between the computer and the MP3 player, These guys are so good at their job.

NEXT EPISODE: THE BOUNTY OF CERES

Upstairs

The TARDIS arrives in a dark and dusty attic at 10 Downing Street, but within minutes of leaving the ship the Doctor, Steven and Vicki realize there is something wrong: there doesn't seem to be a way out. What's more alarming is the presence of a strange alien fungus working its way through the rooms of the attic, displacing the rooms across time as it goes. Separated from the TARDIS, the crew must confront the alien menace and its servants if they are going to survive.

Upstairs is told mainly from Vicki's point of view this time, with Peter Purves joining in as Steven to complete the dialogue pieces. Given that Vicki remembers this story from quite some time after she left the TARDIS we are not shown her future so it's a safe spot to enjoy this one as it gives nothing away. Steven does not contribute any narrative at all.

Haunted house stories are a mainstay of horror and tension; and those places where nobody goes within their own house are often scarier when we see things living alongside us just separated by a layer of wood and plaster. The only thing scarier than a basement loaded with old junk and shadows is an attic, full of all its creaky floors and piles of boxed up memories people have forgotten. In 1989 the series did its first take on a haunted house story with great success, and Upstairs manages to pull off the same feat evoking a claustrophobic atmosphere inside what one would assume to be a safe place. The tantalizing glimpse the Doctor gets of London out a window early on serves to mock the time travellers' situation, with familiar surroundings just out of reach and the creeping unknown only inches away.

Mat Coward is a new author to the series, and he is obviously no stranger to the regular characters giving them lines we would find perfectly in character. Fresh blood is always a good thing, even if it is on a smaller scale story, and it is also good to have Maureen O'Brien take her turn at playing the Doctor's lines for a change. There are always a lot of regrets that the originals are not around anymore to play their roles, but as no-one lives forever it's an unrealistic wish to have fulfilled, but by having Hartnell's lines performed by those who knew and worked with him it's almost like he is being channeled back into the series.

NEXT EPISODE: ETHERIA

Mission to the Unknown

It's the planet Kembel. Space Security Agent Marc Cory has landed on what he considers the most hostile planet in the galaxy on a mission vital to the survival of the solar system: to determine if the Dalek threat has returned. It has been one thousand years since their last conquest of Earth, but recent sightings of strange craft in the area have caused alarm, and Cory has been sent to investigate. The fears are justified - the Daleks are indeed on Kembel as are representatives of other hostile forces, and their goal is to unite and conquer the solar system. Before Cory can communicate with his own forces, he is discovered by the Daleks and killed, and the Dalek master plan is set to proceed.

A couple of firsts here: first single standalone episode in the entire history of the show, and the only standalone in the classic series, And the first episode not to feature the Doctor or any of his companions. I'm not sure if it was disappointing for audiences back in the day to watch the whole thing and not see the Doctor appear to save Marc Cory or if they got that this was a teaser for something much bigger and better to come. But you can bet that Terry Nation, with dollar signs in his eyes, was thrilled to have the Daleks in their own show for one episode - it would be the sort of thing to make him think that he could sell them to American networks in their own series and make heaps of cash.

The standalone episode was good for the Daleks, really. Let's face facts: The Chase was not exactly the best thing they were ever in, and to see them reduced to stuttering buffoons was not going to make anyone fear them. This time, though, the Dalek menace is back and for the first time it actually wins. They have surrounded themselves with thugs from across the galaxy in this evil alliance but anyone who knows the Daleks would have to be skeptical about how long that might last. But for now here they are together and they're a fantastic bunch of aliens. It's no Mos Eisley cantina I grant you, but they are some of the most interesting aliens on the show so far, each with their own backstory screaming to be fleshed out. And that big tall thing in the back is really interesting to look at.

That is, of course, if you look at stills or Ian Levine's specially commissioned animated version as I did.

Mission to the Unknown is, like so many others of this period, lost. And in this case being only one episode long it's not like we can say "At least we have episode 3," as we did with Galaxy Four. Without the episode to watch my first introduction to it was as a chapter in John Peel's so-so novelization of the big feature The Dalek Master Plan Part 1: Mission to the Unknown and then eventually I got a hold of the audio on the BBC Radio Collection where it was also lumped in with the 12 episode mammoth tale as a prelude. I imagine if it were found today it would probably get its own DVD release with the three surviving episodes of DMP or maybe as a standalone and soak the punters for a few bucks for 25 minutes of  classic footage. Sometimes I am not a big fan of Mr Levine's fandom politics (or any fandom politics for that matter) but I thank him profusely for this service he did by having this work done so it can be enjoyed visually at last. With all the animated inserts in the other DVDs where episodes are missing and restored through an animated episode, this doesn't seem as absurd an idea as it might have in the past.

The next episode would not go right into what was brewing on Kembel; we would be taken to the plains of Asia Minor and see some big wooden horse or something and time would pass on Kembel and the plan would be in full swing. Well with Big Finish that gap can be widened a bit with some extra tales from their line...

NEXT EPISODE: UPSTAIRS

Galaxy Four

The Doctor, Vicki and Steven come to a silent planet which is capable of supporting life but appears to be devoid of any, at least any that is indigenous; they soon find out that they are not the only visitors. Two parties of aliens are also on the planet, both with ships crashed from a firefight they had overhead: the militaristic all female Drahvins, and the tucked reptilian Rills who are served by small utility machines Vicki calls "Chumblies". Both groups are eager to leave as they know the planet is in its last days and will soon break up, but the TARDIS crew are not sure who they trust and who they should help.

Almost every science fiction series goes here eventually; the concept of a female dominated society where men are either not present at all or just there are servants, slaves or decoration. The Drahvins don't have much use for men and see them as a waste of resources, preferring to only keep as many as they need handy for reproduction and killing the rest off. Even within their female ranks there is a division, with their leader, Maaga, being considered a "real" person with more intellect and a better set of menu options at meal time. The rest are still female but they are drones with a limited intelligence, only assigned numbers as names, and they are not treated very well at all - bullied, cajoled, threatened and mocked. Maaga seems amused that the Doctor and Steven are there, but shows no immediate empathy towards Vicki either, probably because she allows herself to be in the company of these men.

The Rills, on the other hand, look like hideous monsters, and are only glimpsed at times rather than seen full on. They are heard, though, with a big booming voice which is somewhat akin to the voice of the Morok computer bank on Xeros. The Rills require a specialized atmosphere to breathe - ammonia gas - and have their workforce of small domed robots which come to be known as Chumblies to do the work for them where they cannot go. And in another science fiction cliches, the ugly scary Rills are actually the benevolent ones here; they just want to get away and not die with the planet. They will even take the Drahvins with them to save them, but Maaga won't let herself move past her revulsion of them, preferring to die than take help from something so hideous.

This isn't a really complicated story, with the TARDIS crew split up here and there and then reuinted after having discovered something important to their plight which they must share. As far as televised continuity goes this is Steven's first full on adventure, having been found in the TARDIS in The Time Meddler unaware of his surroundings, and he and Vicki are set up to squabble here and there which annoys the Doctor.

With Galaxy Four we are not only at the start of the original series third season but also at the start of the era of the missing episodes; this one is four episodes long but all that exists is a six minute clip in episode one, and all of episode three which was found in 2011. Aside from that it's all stills, fragment clips and the full audio. My own first encounter with the adventure was a paperback adaptation published in 1985 written by original script author William Emms, and then the BBC Radio Collection some years later in 2002. I got a hold of the third episode when I bought the special edition DVD of The Aztecs where it was included as a bonus feature, but only finally got round to watching it for this project. I said to my partner when we watched it the other day that it was like brand new Doctor Who to me, and despite the fact that it is 51 years old I still enjoyed it more than anything I saw in the 2012 season.

At the end of the story the TARDIS is once more in flight, and looking at the scanner Vicki muses about what is going on down on a planet they pass. The action switches to that planet where something very sinister is going on indeed...

NEXT EPISODE: MISSION TO THE UNKNOWN

The Suffering

Still new to the TARDIS, Steven is continuing to get used to the notion of time travel. The crew arrive in 1912 and after coming into contact with some fossilized remains Vicki begins to hear voices. The Doctor is suspicious of the remains and while he and Steven investigate Vicki falls further under its thrall and falls in with the Suffragette movement, bringing the influence of the skull to a young woman named Constance. The struggle for women to get the vote has started, but with an alien intelligence with a grudge against men now in the mix, the tide of events begins to take a more deadly turn.

The Suffering does what Doctor Who does very well: drops the crew into history and very shortly introduces another intruder element to the events and brings their influence to bear on the potential outcome. Unlike the machinations of the likes of the Monk, though, the disembodied entity is not aware of its surroundings outside of the unrest and frustration of the women's rights struggle; on its own planet it was cast out by men and carries a fury within and when it sees women being oppressed once again it begins to lash out at men as it comes across them. One could argue that it is not motivated by evil, just out of pain.

This tale was originally presented as a two disc adventure, the first Companion Chronicle to do so before it became a regular feature (for at least two more adventures before the range was suspended and then scaled back from a monthly release). The storytelling is split between two companions - Steven and Vicki as played by Peter Purves and Maureen O'Brien - and unlike other Companion Chronicles is not told long after the companions have left the TARDIS but actually in continuity with the other adventures. It is still told in hindsight, but has Vicki and Steven recording their notions of their most recent adventure on a tape recorder in case anyone ever finds it after they have left. This would have been the first time these two actors were performing together again since the 1960s and they do not miss a beat, finding their characters again with ease. The news that they will be performing together in some further episodes in future under the banner of The Early Adventures is something to look forward to for sure.

Here's my only complaint, because I have to have one I guess: the next episode, Galaxy Four, has a lot of similar themes to it which I will be reviewing next, and like some of the earlier tales where the TARDIS crew meet a new British King each time it feels like a bit of repetition, even if the theme is not as pronounced in one as the other. If the end had been left open for other episodes to be dropped in and create a bit of a buffer it would be great, but it is not done this way; Vicki is determined to cut Steven's hair, leading to the opening scene of the next story...

NEXT EPISODE: GALAXY FOUR

The Empire of Glass

Something odd has happened to the Doctor. Steven and Vicki discovered him missing from the TARDIS and then reappearing with no memory of where he had been, the only clue being a printed invitation in his hand. The TARDIS takes them to Venice in 1609 where a case of mistaken identity lands them as guests of the Doge, and Steven becomes a drinking buddy with Galileo Galilei who is there to show his new telescope to the Doge. But there is more going on in Venice, even more than usual. Strange creatures lurk in the dark streets and a man named Irving Braxiatel wonders where the Doctor has gotten to - for without his presence a galactic arms conference will surely fail.

This one took me a while to get through, mostly because my reading schedule was interrupted by guests and the cover of the book falling off when the humidity made the glue let go after 21 years on the shelf. But on the other side of things I took a while reading it because I wasn't as engaged in this one and didn't really make the time to read it through. I'm not saying it was a bad one, it was loaded with continuity angles but when it got right down to it the plot was just a bit... weak. I think my biggest beef was why it happened in Venice at all, aside from pure self indulgence on the author's part. With a gathering of alien delegates which could attract attention, why would Braxiatel choose Earth at all even if the risk of discovery was minimal, and then choose the one place on Earth where the only telescope in existence was located causing him to have to worry about sabotaging it lest his guests and their spacecraft be seen. Once I had that rattling around in my head it was a bit hard to buy into the rest of the flow of the plot, including the doubecrosses and the motivation of the other aliens present.

As far as the continuity goes Empire of Glass is set just before the second season began without and direct leads into the following broadcast episode, Galaxy Four, but it takes a cue from a 1973 televised episode where the Doctor was taken out of time and met his future selves. I guess Andy Lane wanted to give his own take on where that part of the Doctor's life was so the story opens with him returning, effectively, from the future but with his memories blanked as not to spoil his future for him. So there's the handy memory loss and with that comes the Doctor's uncertainty about the invitation and hilarity (I think this was supposed to read as a comedy actually) ensues. The next bit of continuity fun comes in the form of Braxiatel himself; he's another of the Doctor's people (which is a bit less grand given we only just met the Monk) and the character was being used extensively in appearances and references in the New Adventures range with the seventh Doctor, and these days is a mainstay in two of the Big Finish Productions spinoff series. Once the Doctor and Braxiatel actually meet their exchange is like old boys meeting after a long time (and perhaps it has been a long time) but there are some hints dropped about their manners and resemblance which were either to inply that a) they are family, or b) they are the same person. It is never really made clear which, but odds are there was only so much Andy Lane was allowed to imply here. And I am forced to ask, and not for the first time, why bother if it's not going to go anywhere? Braxiatel's actual origins are from a 1979 televised episode where the name is just dropped in conversation, never really intended for development, but such is the magic of Doctor Who where anything can happen.

There are some other minor references to popular alien species that have so far not been seen on the screen in this continuity (Cybermen and Sontarans to name just two... Ice Warriors to name one more...) but the one that really went clunk for me is the appearance of King James towards the end of the story. The Doctor and Vicki had already had encounters with the same monarch in The Plotters which was set some four years prior to Empire but alas published a year later, and he is not shown as the same sloth that he was in Gareth Roberts' book. More to the point, given how he had lusty desires for Vicki (although he thought she was a boy) it wouldn't be very clever to cross paths with him again. This in itself is not Andy Lane's fault as his book was published first, but just a little point that the editors of the range at the time should have spotted if they wanted to really put their mark on their "new" adventures and keep things tight. Problem is you get too much of this going on and what seemed really clever and cool dissolves into what's knows as a"fan wank".

Empire suffers a bit from an overload of guest stars too; in addition to Galileo the Doctor and company also cross paths with William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe who are both, it seems, acting as spies in the service of King James. I'm not sure how accurate that really is, but here's another wee continuity issue where Shakespeare asks the Doctor if he has a younger brother and describes the fourth Doctor and says he helped him with the writing of Hamlet (which is a reference from the very same episode where Braxiatel is first mentioned). Of course the new series also has the Doctor meeting Shakespeare some 10 years earlier in The Shakespeare Code and the fate of Love's Labour's Won gets a bit of a contradiction from here in Empire but you can't expect the authors to know absolutely everything over the years. And then there's Marlowe - the editors of this range had no problem making a big deal about a historical figure's sexuality as they did with King James, this time having Marlowe lusting after Steven. The question of Steven's sexuality started to come up after this one with fans wondering if Steven somewhere in between the lines got it on with Marlowe. Ah revisionists. What a mess they like to make.

So I resign Empire to the "oh... okay, whatever" file. It's one thing to try and tie a few continuity threads together here and there but to try and create this whole web and overload it with stuff is not really necessary unless Andy Lane knew damn well his plot wasn't enough to fill all the pages. And if that is indeed the case, how about fixing the plot rather than padding it out and burying it under redundant details? Poor show Mr Lane, and poor show whoever was editing at the time.

NEXT EPISODE: THE SUFFERING

The Time Meddler

The TARDIS is a bit of an empty nest with Barbara and Ian gone, but before the Doctor and Vicki can adjust to it just being them, they discover that Steven Taylor managed to escape the collapse of the Mechanoid City and find his way into the TARDIS. Pleased at having a new member of the crew, the Doctor announces that the ship has come to Earth. Steven is skeptical about the claims that the TARDIS is a time machine, and he seems to be onto something when he and Vicki encounter a peasant in what should be the year 1066 with a modern wristwatch. The Doctor senses there is something afoot at the local monastery where a single Monk has taken up residence, and when he investigates he discovers one of his own people deliberately working to change the Earth's past.

With the regular cast reduced in numbers it is an interesting time to delve into a bit of the Doctor's origins, even if they are just in his association with the Monk. Yes, the Monk. There's a lot of "the" going about with the Doctor's people, although how his granddaughter was not "the Susan" is a mystery. The Monk is certainly different from the Doctor; he has no regard for the established history of the world and has made grand plans to change it by changing the outcome of the Battle of Hastings where King Harold died. But as reckless as he seems the Monk is not put across as evil, and does show compassion for the people of Earth around his monastery. And he's playful and jokes with the Doctor about what he is doing, and wants the Doctor to see that this change would be for the better. The Doctor might agree on some level that the different outcome would benefit the people of Earth, but he sticks to the same guns he had when Barbara wanted to change the ways of the Aztecs: no rewriting history, not one line. The Monk is aware of the rules that have been lain down by their people but he simply does not care; he has his own TARDIS (a superior model to the Doctor's) and will go where he likes and do what he likes. Through their interaction though it is obvious that not only are they the same race but they do in fact know each other from their time on their home planet. If the Monk knew Susan we do not know; he does not ask after her and at no time is the name of their species mentioned. It is worth noting that this is the first time we ever see the Doctor meet with a true equal given their shared ancestry.

Steven as a crew member is a change from Ian for sure; whereas Ian was more apt to try and out-logic the Doctor in an argument, Steven is brash and young and hot headed; as a fighter pilot in the wars he has enthusiasm and a degree of training, but not a lot of discipline. He takes a protector role for Vicki right away, not realizing what she has been through already in her travels in the TARDIS. Vicki resents him just showing up and trying to tell her what to do; after all she's now the senior member of the crew and he's the new boy who needs looking after. Whereas the family dynamic of the crew had Ian and Barbara as sort of parent figures, Steven and Vicki are very much the youngsters akin to a brother and sister act now along for the ride with the Doctor. There's a shift in the series with this change of crew; one can almost feel the writing changing up slightly to a more complicated way of telling the story, and some improved production values in the studio. The TARDIS set is still the TARDIS set, but the scenes set atop the cliffs overlooking the sea are made that much more convincing through the use of a projected rolling sky behind the actors, the forest sets are put together with a great deal of care and the threat of a Viking invasion is realized through the inclusion of some stock footage (even if the Vikings we eventually see look nothing like the ones we see rowing the boat).

So with a new companion on board the series closes its' second season, and would return weeks later with new adventures on screen. Meanwhile though, there is more to be enjoyed in the supplemental adventures, first going back to the Virgin Missing Adventures range...

NEXT EPISODE: THE EMPIRE OF GLASS