Salvation

Young Dorothea (who prefers to be caled Dodo) Chaplet escapes from being forcibly confined by a being she knows is not human and runs right into a blue police box on the Wimbledon Common. But rather than get the help of the police she finds herself in the company of the Doctor and Steven, and their hasty departure in the TARDIS takes them to New York City on the same day, where it turns out they are not the only visitors. A group of beings have come to town with the power to give people what they want, and they are drawing attention and growing in power and influence. The military wants them gone, they know a threat when they see one. Steven, his faith in the Doctor shaken by the recent death of Anne Chaplet, finds himself wanting something to believe in. And Dodo realizes that one of the beings is the same one who she has encountered before.

Despite having a pretty drab cover like the other BBC Books PDAs of its time, Salvation is easily one of the more engaging tales of the line. I'd first acknowledge the use of New York City as a backdrop to the tale as a fitting place for the story to take place; given the time it is set in there is not yet a military order in the UK to deal with alien menaces so the next best thing is the paranoid armed forces of the United States of America with all their secret Roswell stuff and their not so secret fears about the Russians, and with the Vietnam war boiling away across the Pacific. Unlike some adventures in the eleventh Doctor's time (looking ahead) this isn't some big suck up to an emerging market stunt.

I had said before that Dodo's appearance on board the TARDIS at the conclusion of The Massacre was not exactly the most clever companion introduction ever, but here there's an attempt to make it a little bit more credible. Well sort of. Escaping from a stranger who kept her locked up for days and attempted to molest her might rattle someone a bit and cast a bit of doubt on her easygoing manner at landing inside the TARDIS, unless we want to write that off as shock. Given that Dodo herself is not the deepest companion on screen she here is given a lot of rich backstory with her parents dead and her cold distant aunt a peripheral figure in her lie when she needs guiding adult influence in her life more than ever. Her almost instant bond with the Doctor is a lot more credible now, and his with her is easier to buy into as Steven has walked out on him. Sadly though this is really the only time Dodo is going to be an effective companion who is more than her brief of a plucky teenage girl from London.

Steven is haunted by the guilt of not having helped someone in his past and has been using his time with the Doctor as a means to make a difference, but with the death of Anne Chaplet and the Doctor's refusal to help her comes a new feeling of shame. The gods will make everything right, and after they intervene to save Steven himself he is a believer, and is now on the opposite side from the Doctor. Deep down Steven knows that the Doctor is probably right, though, but the gods have him in their thrall - him and a growing mass of New Yorkers who all want something.

Without Steven at his side the Doctor is forced to carry on himself, protecting Dodo and trying to make the bull-headed General Marchant see how to combat the gods without conventional weapons. The Doctor sees the gods for what they are and refuses to let them affect him, even if they can see right into his mind and pluck at his past failures to save people (Sara, Anne, and there is even a reference to Rebecca Nurses' fate in author Steve Lyons' previous book, The Witch Hunters). Lyons is very good at getting Hartnell's Doctor on page - you can hear him when you read the lines.

There's a lot of other things and characters happening in Salvation from the supporting military personnel to a crooked PR man and a pushy journalist but to me the real standout is just the regular cast, even if they are not all working together properly right now. Dodo must be confused by the tension between the Doctor and Steven as they work out their differences but she still chooses to become part of the crew This crew combo suffers as far as history of the show is concerned because they only get four complete stories together (and only half of those are complete in themselves to be seen) and Dodo does not stay long once Steven makes his eventual departure. If they had been written this way, or if this story had been around back then even, maybe things would have been different. But whatever has happened, Salvation can be dropped right in after The Massacre to give Dodo that proper introduction without disrupting any of the continuity into what comes after...

NEXT EPISODE: THE ARK