The Sara Kingdom Trilogy

Home Truths 

Sara Kingdom is dead, aged to death and turned to dust on the planet Kembel when the Daleks’ time destructor was activated. But here she is to tell the tale of another adventure she shared with the Doctor and Steven. The sole inhabitant of a remote guest house, Sara receives a visitor who wants to hear of her past, and she tells of an old house where merely thinking of something makes it happen. Upon exiting the TARDIS, they find the inhabitants of the house – a young married couple – dead. Sara’s instincts rule out a natural death, but the question then remains: if they were murdered, is the killer still inside with them?

This is one of the earlier Companion Chronicles with Jean Marsh returning as Sara Kingdom for the first time; production wise it pre-dates the audio episodes I have already enjoyed with Sara in them but as far as continuity goes it could be anytime after The Dalek Master Plan when Sara finds herself in this house. The events she speaks of over three episodes here would obviously take place somewhere alongside The Anachronauts, An Ordinary Life and The Sontarans while the time travellers were on the run from the Daleks. Marsh’s voice is pretty creaky and it’s hard to reconcile it with her younger self in Dalek Master Plan but with some time having flowed by before this tale, it can be more readily accepted.

The danger with going for a haunted house episode in Doctor Who, no matter when it is placed, is accidentally evoking the 1989 episode Ghost Light. After all, haunted house stories usually have all the same elements: strange sounds in the dark, dark corners, creaky stairs, claustrophobia, not always an easy escape available. Home Truths has all of this despite not so much being an old abandoned cobwebby place as it is a modern eerily deserted one. The fact that a new places, a house where the lights still work and the water still runs and there is no decay can still contain menace is the crafty bit; Paranormal Activity made heaps off that kind of tension with the unknown insinuating itself into what should be a safe place. The Doctor and company may be up against the unseen, but the Doctor rationalizes that it may not necessarily be evil despite the presence of two dead bodies.

The Drowned World

I remember when this one came out thinking that it was interesting to see another title snatched from a Madonna song title (along with Survival and Human Nature). No relation, though, not even a sly reference to the metaphorical drowned world of Madonna’s song… the world in this tale is literally drowning.

Sara Kingdom’s “ghost” is on trial of sorts. The elders of the society are not keen on haunted

buildings – they make no distinction between supernatural or an AI it seems. Sara is not haunting the place, she’s just a copy of the original superimposed into the house itself, but her presence raises a lot of concerns. Robert, her “interrogator” returns to her to get evidence to support leaving her as she is, and Sara tells him of a time when she, along with the Doctor and Steven, lost the TARDIS under rising waters in a flooding mining encampment on a far off world. The miners onsite believe that they have come to rescue them and it should be simple enough to just get the TARDIS back from under the water and pile everyone inside and go, but the water itself has other ideas.

Sentient water and water tentacles… think The Abyss. Well, sort of. On alien worlds it’s hard to say what’s normal and what is not, but we’ve been down this road with Doctor Who in other episodes such as The Waters of Mars and the Big Finish audio The Genocide Machine. They tell us that the oceans of our own planet are alive, and the concept is taken to this planet as well, but in a more literal sense.

Sara gets to be a hero here. She takes a few miners with her into the flooded area of the base to retrieve the TARDIS and in her efforts to get the ship back takes on a leadership role instead of just blindly following orders as she used to do. Being with the Doctor is confusing for her at times as she is used to doing what she is told and reporting to authority. And she is also haunted by the death of her brother Brett Vyon  - the brother she herself killed when she believed him to have been a traitor.

There’s no real sense of when this one happens within that gap in The Dalek Master Plan so it doesn’t conflict with anything that has come since; the real narrative is the drama of Sara’s conversations with Robert as he tries to formulate a case for her preservation. Robert doesn’t want anything to happen to Sara but she is oddly resigned to her fate if it is deemed for her to be demolished or destroyed. But as their conversations carry on they start to grow closer, Robert identifies the human Sara within the house and wants to do more for her.

The Guardian of the Solar System

Sara’s final tale for Robert takes her back into the past once more, but into her own personal past before she met the Doctor and Steven. The TARDIS materializes in the workings of a massive clock, and while exploring Sara encounters her own brother, still alive, and realizes that she is in a time about a year before she met the Doctor and Steven. The clock is run by old men slaves and is vital to keeping the space lanes open while research on instantaneous travel continues, and at the heart of the whole thing is Mavic Chen, Guardian of the Solar System, and the man who would betray his people to the Daleks.

Running into Brett should be enough to send Sara into an abyss of guilt but she doesn’t have the time for that; meeting up with Chen after seeing him betray the galaxy is almost as horrific as going back in time and meeting Hitler. Sara realizes that she is in a precarious position here being in the past; any wrong thing she might say could alter the future and put the Doctor and Steven in danger when they would eventually meet Chen on Kembel.

Ah we’re into metaphor land with this one; the clock and all its cogs are how Sara feels about her life; trapped in the machine that was Space Security, and then in the machine that is the house. And the guilt that weighs her down all through her life after Brett is killed… short as her life might be after that event. The whole deal about Brett’s death was brought up in less than subtle fashion all through the novelization of The Dalek Master Plan and here it is once more, although to actually hear Jean Marsh articulate Sara’s feelings is much more effective.

And I am going to really blow the ending here because of where it leads so if you’re concerned about this sort of thing STOP READING NOW…

Through the inherent powers of the house, Sara becomes corporeal once again and as the story closes the TARDIS lands there shortly afterwards. Sara is told that if she wants answers, the Doctor is inside, but he’s not the man she knew as he, like her, has changed. The Doctor’s first regeneration is coming up fast so we know it’s not going to be the Doctor she knew. Is he alone in the TARDIS? Which Doctor is this? Is Sara about to be a companion once more?

Sara’s trilogy ends here, but the potential for her to return is there, and that’s a pretty exciting notion; a companion who we hardly got to know properly on screen could see a whole new life through Big Finish. It has worked further on in the range to bring some new life to other companions who weren't the best fit on screen, so it couldn't fail with a stong character like Sara.

But as for new lives, the Doctor is about to say goodbye to his old one…

NEXT EPISODE: THE TENTH PLANET

Ten Little Aliens

The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Ben and Polly to a dead asteroid hanging in space which, by coincidence, is where a group of Elite military hopefuls have been sent on a training mission. The mission leader, who controls her group through fear and bullying tactics, immediately suspects the TARDIS crew of being enemy agents in league with the troll-like Schirr. The Doctor realizes that they have all walked into a deadly trap, and despite the fact that there are ten Shirr corpses on the asteroid, the enemy if very much at large in the dark tunnels around them.

Well here's a departure and a half. Ten Little Aliens has got to be one of the goriest, most atmospheric non-traditional Doctor Who novels I have ever read. As was the case with The Time Travellers this is a story that takes the TARDIS team into extreme territory far beyond what is done on even the current television series; it is so jarringly different from the televised episodes it is nestled between that it almost doesn't feel like the same franchise.

Where to start...

The setting. It's the far future of Earth's empire, and it's a pretty big one as far as it can be told. Entire planets have been named after old regions of Earth including Idaho, Paris II and Toronto, and whenever they are referenced it's usually a hindsight mention by one of the military team and it's usually because something bad happened there. Earth's empire has swept so far into space that it has sucked up other species, including the Schirr, and is struggling to hold itself together now it is so bloated. There are elements of the Schirr who want out and are waging wars against the empire for their freedom, but the space marines have been sent in to crunch that nonsense. Oddly, when the marines speak of the struggles with the Schirr there is never any mention of other conflicts - I expected at least one Dalek reference to get dropped somewhere but no.

The marines, then, despite how they are being portrayed (bad ass grunts all with their own distinct backstories and nicknames of course - think Aliens) are actually the bad guys, sent in on missions to quell uprisings by an oppressed species, but here when they are cut off from the support of the rest of the empire with only the leadership of a bully (Major Haunt actually shoots and beats one of her own soldiers in front of an assembly to humiliate him under the guise of proving his protective armour works - imagine if the RCMP did that) they start to fall victim to paranoia and fear.

Ben and Polly are an excellent team, and without any physical limitations associated with an actor on screen, the Doctor can be with them the whole story and be active and engaged with what is going on. Ben and Polly have only been on the TARDIS crew a short time but already they are developing an attraction to each other (and a jealousy complex when each sees the other getting chummy with a marine of the opposite sex) and an unshakable faith in the Doctor. And the Doctor is exactly the character on the page that he is on screen, not straying from his own character and thus keeping the rest of what goes on around him rooted in the traditions of Doctor Who despite being not of the norm; if the Doctor himself started picking up guns and shooting at things or lowering himself to Haunt's bullying ways then the entire thing would fall apart. Ben and Polly also get a bit of development of their own; Polly flashing back to her party girl days in London and some promiscuous nights out at Inferno, her posh background and her stint at working at a charity shop. Ben thinks back to his brother and his time with the navy.

The bit I don't like? There's this kind of choose-your-own-adventure bit where everyone enters a holonet and can experience each other's thoughts and feelings as they hunt the tunnels of the asteroid. The same sequences get repeated over and over each from a different character's perspective, but not from the Doctor's as there's no way anyone is getting in his head. It's in the pages leading up to this and the segment itself where the book slows down a bit and loses some of the momentum despite some of the more graphic descriptions of the violence and gore. Maybe I made a mistake by reading them through back to back rather than play the game of jumping from segment to segment, but I don't think it would have made it any better. And the appearance of some nasty stone cherub angels seems a bit of an odd choice, although wanker fans who don't think the show existed before 2005 will just assume this is an early appearance of those angels and get all "squeeeee!" about it. It's not. Don't go "squeee". Ever.

Actual placement for this tale is a bit strained, putting it in the final few moments between scenes at the end of The Smugglers; that episode closes with the Doctor proclaiming they have landed on the coldest place on Earth, but Steven Cole must have really wanted to write for this character team otherwise he would have picked somewhere easier to place a story. But the TARDIS eventually leaves the asteroid behind, and heads for where the Doctor says it did, and destiny is waiting there for him.

But before we go there...

NEXT EPISODES: THE SARA KINGDOM TRILOGY

The Smugglers

Ben and Polly have entered the TARDIS just as it departs London, and once the Doctor has set the ship in motion there is no going back. Ben is livid - he's going to be listed as AWOL if he doesn't get back to barracks. Polly doesn't mind - she's up for adventure. The Doctor is furious at the intrusion, but once the ship lands at the seaside he accepts the presence of the two young people and carries on despite Ben's protest. It's somewhere on the Cornish coast in the 17th century and the locals are not keen on strangers as they could be smugglers or worse. There is indeed treachery afoot locally as a group of smugglers lead by Captain Pike of the Albatross are looking for Avery's lost treasure - and the time travellers are caught up in the intrigue.

The Smugglers is not an exceptionally complicated piece of work as far as Doctor Who scripts go, and as a period piece it functions... good enough. It is rife with the usual devices of the Doctor and company being split up and all finding their way back together despite the dangers that surround them. The TARDIS is not available to them for the duration of the tale as the tide comes in and fills up the cave where it has materialized, forcing them to take local accommodation for the night. There's also a lot of being captured, escaping, and being captured again.

There's not as much of the Doctor in this one as had previously been; William Hartnell's health was going downhill fast and his ability to perform was going with it. Rewrites were made to shift a lot of the action away from him and have him knocked out and carried off, leaving new companions Polly (Anneke Wills) and Ben (Michael Craze) to carry more of the episode. The Smugglers then serves more as an extended introduction to these characters as they get to grips with life in the TARDIS; modern day menaces in London they were able to cope with but time travel... that's going to take some getting used to. And given that Polly was under WOTAN's control for much of The War Machines this is where she and Ben can actually be the new team together with the Doctor.

I got my first taste of The Smugglers when it was published as a Target book in 1988, penned onto page by Terrance Dicks. While Mr Dicks has contributed a great deal to the series over all the years I still find his writing style to be pretty bare bones and without anything really embellished, and the novelization of The Smugglers was no exception. Then again one can't expect miracles; with the original televised episodes long lost there's not much to go on aside from the off air audio recordings which I enjoyed recently, so not much way to faithfully build on something with little visuals to support it. Still, at the time in 1988 the Target range was pulling all sorts of old scripts out for novelization and without those there would be no enjoying the story at all until the CD versions were released years later.

But of course, that may not be a problem anymore if the speculation in this article here is indeed steeped in truth... wouldn't it be nice to get another whole story back intact?

Time is ticking down for the first Doctor now. He's only got one televised episode left, but BBC Books have provided one more novel to keep him around just a little bit longer...

NEXT EPISODE: TEN LITTLE ALIENS

The War Machines

The Doctor and Dodo return to Earth, in London in 1966. Dodo is happy to be home but the Doctor is drawn towards the newly completed Post Office Tower, suspecting something going on. Upon their arrival there they meet Professor Brett and his invention, the supercomputer called WOTAN, as well as his secretary Polly. WOTAN is being set up to link up computers all over the world and become a thinking entity, but WOTAN has already decided that it alone should be in charge of the planet and begins taking control of those around it, including
Brett and Dodo, and then Polly. The Doctor's investigations are aided by a young sailor named Ben who befriended Polly and Dodo at a night club, and it is revealed that WOTAN is creating massive War Machines using an army of human slaves, and the plan is to take over the world by force.

The War Machines has a lot going for it, starting with being written by Ian Stuart Black in his redemption of his work following the drab Savages. The setting of contemporary London puts the production back on the streets so the Doctor and company can be seen walking about various locations in the city, as well as making use of the new Post Office Tower as a plot device and the most modern (at the time) location available (this would be like shooting in the CN Tower when it first opened, or the Shard building in 2013's The Bells of St John). Visually the War Machines themselves are impressive as well. Um. Well the War Machine anyways, singular, as we only see one at a time and it's obvious the machine just has the number on the front changed. Size doesn't make up for practicality once one gets a closer look; it has these big club-like arms used for smashing things but it doesn't have much of a reach to it so to get clubbed down you'd have probably been run over first. It also has weapons which fire smoke very much like the Daleks did in their theatrical films, but its aim is dreadful.

How about that cast? Polly and Ben form a pretty mismatched duo with Ben starting a bar fight at the Inferno nightclub when a patron gets fresh with Polly. Dodo is kind of hanging out in the background once Polly comes on scene and after she is taken over by WOTAN she is pretty much done; it's got to be the least subtle shove out the door in the series, and after episode two there's no Dodo anymore (more on that later). Somehow the Doctor is recognized as an expert in computer technology upon his arrival at Brett's lab but there is no clear reason why this happens at all; the novelized version of the story suggests that the Doctor comes up with an introductory letter penned by none other than Ian Chesterton which somehow gains him the credibility he needs to walk right into WOTAN's headquarters. And then there's WOTAN itself, a machine which already knows what the TARDIS is, which suggests that it may have already tapped databases ahead of its scheduled date. WOTAN also refers to the Doctor as "Doctor Who" in its attempt to acquire him for its missions. This may be because wherever it found reference to the TARDIS it may have come across linking information about the Doctor himself, with the name "Doctor Who" being used as code and mistaken as his actual name. The Doctor is also accepted immediately by the local politicians as an expert and a resource, being offered lodging at Sir Charles' home and eventually being onsite while the army combats the rampaging War Machines in much the same way the third Doctor in the future will work with a military organization to protect the Earth from similar threats. Its interesting to note that the entire premise of the novel The Time Travellers is set in a time where WOTAN succeeds in taking over, and in that novel the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan are left to deal with the fallout.

Companions come and go over the series and we should all be used to it by now. With Steven having already made his departure in somewhat unlikely circumstances it was just a matter of time until Dodo was also gone, with her character having had little to no development in her five story run (yeah that's it just five televised stories). The expanded universe of the series, though, lends a bit more credibility to her departure as it did with Steven's; whereas Big Finish and the two novel publishers focussed on Steven's sense of outrage over not being able to help people, the background information on Dodo - scant as it is because Jackie Lane has not been in any of it yet - suggests that she was not at all happy to travel in the TARDIS and took the first opportunity to get out that she could. She freely admits throughout her time that she has had to over-write herself to be a more acceptable person in her aunt's social circles ever since her parents died, and as evidenced in The Man in the Velvet Mask once she is away from the Doctor she lets it all drop and becomes a deeply troubled young woman craving affection and belonging. After her mind is briefly taken over by WOTAN it's no wonder she's had enough and decides not to carry on. There's complaining that she doesn't get a departure scene, just a hurried message passed on by Polly, but really that's nothing new at all when it comes to interpersonal relations. How many times have people complained about people they meet just vanishing and never coming back into their lives? Usually this is after a date or two, but the reasoning is the same; they just want out and they just go.

Polly and Ben make for good replacements; both young, energetic and a bit fuller as characters with Ben effectively deserting the Navy when he leaves with the Doctor, and party girl Polly now an unemployed secretary once WOTAN is defeated. With both as modern characters the expectation is they will connect with the audience well and pick up the action where the ageing and ailing Doctor cannot. The Doctor is all set to leave on his own without Dodo and doesn't seem particularly hurt by her departure; he just seems to think it's rude of her to do so this way. He's either getting used to people leaving him or he isn't particularly concerned at the moment as he is headed towards the end of his life whether he realizes it right now or not.

And as the TARDIS leaves London at the finale with Ben and Polly having come aboard via a spare key the Doctor dropped, a couple walking down the street witness the police box dematerializing and exchange bemused glances before carrying on. According to some things I have read (all on the internet so it's all true of course) that couple was supposed to be a cameo by William Russell and Jacqueline Hill as Ian and Barbara, supposedly pushing a baby pram. That would have been just too awesome for words.

NEXT EPISODE: THE SMUGGLERS

The Locked Room

Steven Taylor is a driven man, and after coming out of his exile he has been working on a project which baffles his granddaughter, Sida. Steven has constructed a transmission tower and a lead lined room which filters out all the outside world's influences and signals - perfect if he wants to truly get away from it all, but once he and Sida are locked inside the room acts as a conduit to the Doctor. The Doctor tells them he is dying, but suggests that he is only beginning a new point in his life; Steven wants to help and attempts to bring the Doctor to him, but interfering in the process the Doctor describes could have dire consequences and allow a hidden enemy to emerge.

Unlike The Founding Fathers here we do not have a prior tale of Steven's time with the Doctor as the main story; this is set in Steven's own timeline and crosses over with where the Doctor will be in a few more episodes. Sida is back, and it is set some time after their previous adventure with the disembodied copy of the Doctor's mind. Yes, even that particular genie in the bottle makes a return, along with the Doctor himself, and the stray Vardan which killed Oliver in The First Wave. The Vardan is trapped, though; the lead lined room has confined it and weakened it and with nothing to draw from it has a corporeal existence so long as it is trapped there. But when the door is open, that will change.

The Locked Room uses that same "people trapped in an elevator" device as with The Edge of Destruction only here there is no paranoia among the people; they know who the enemy is, they can see and hear it, and even touch it, and there's a moral dilemma about what to do with it. Sida realizes that if they are going to kill the Vardan they have no weapons to use, they are going to have to use their hands to do it. The Vardan is no fool and plays on their reluctance to be killers, even though she will have no compunction about killing them once she is strong enough.

This is the last of the Steven Taylor Companion Chronicles at this point; the second volume of first Doctor tales is to be released in a few months but by then I'll be too far off to come back to it... whatever comes next will have to wait til next time. It would be fun to see where else Steven's life will take him after this meeting with the Doctor; now that he's decided he's not cut out to be a ruler maybe Steven will leave the planet and go adventuring on his own once more.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Dodo...

NEXT EPISODE: THE WAR MACHINES

The Founding Fathers

With Sida at his side, Steven Taylor returns to the city after years in his self imposed exile. He doesn't want to be here, he doesn't feel he belongs here anymore, but he has to come back. When the Doctor was here before the Elders drained his mind and made a copy, and the copy is still there. The copy of the Doctor wants to stand for election and rule the planet, but Steven knows this can't happen. Steven tells of a time when the Doctor, Vicki and himself were locked out of the TARDIS in 1762 and had to enlist the help of Benjamin Franklin himself. But this tale is not just a bedtime story; it is a warning about the perils of trying to get involved where one doesn't belong in history.

Steven is once again speaking in parables as he did previously, although the tale gets split a bit between his recollections and those of the copy of the Doctor's mind in it's jar. It's an interesting bit to return to; I had almost forgotten about the copy myself and I only listened to the audio of The Savages recently, so for an author to pluck that out of memory and make it a plot point is quite something. The copy is aware that it is not the Doctor, but still speaks to Steven as if it were, and having all the Doctor's memories it can recall everything that the Doctor has ever done, including accidentally lock the TARDIS doors with the key still inside.

Clever that; it's the old formula of being separated from the ship again which was the driving device of so many of season one's plots. Benjamin Franklin is an interesting choice of an ally for this one; I'm no history buff so his presence in London in 1762 was an interesting factoid, and the cover along with his big claim to fame is a bit of a no-brainer as to how he can help the Doctor. But Franklin isn't alone, he's being shadowed by a mystery female benefactor who the Doctor and Steven can only surmise is another time traveler with an agenda of her own.

Vicki is in this one, although she's not given much in the way of anything. Sure she's someone for Steven to talk to while separated from the Doctor in London but otherwise she's not used very much. It's been established already with Big Finish that there is a gap where the Doctor and Steven traveled with Oliver, so why not another adventure with just the Doctor and Steven to fill that part out a bit more? It's not like Vicki is being overlooked at all by the series; she's been played by Maureen O'Brien so many times now in other audios that her number of stories is double that of her televised episodes alone (more if you count the novels). If she's not going to be used properly, why do it at all?

The Founding Fathers is one of the more recent Companion Chronicles released; the line took a bit of a rest and returned not as a monthly series but a box set of four adventures in the first volume of the first Doctor along with The Sleeping Blood, The Unwinding World and the next adventure. I don't know if it has been spotted elsewhere but the new Companion Chronicles feel a lot more clever this way, the writing a bit edgier almost as if there are some tips being taken from some of the better episodes of the new television series. But despite that iffy kind of inspiration (if that is indeed what's going on) the Companion Chronicles range still delivers the goods.

NEXT EPISODE: THE LOCKED ROOM

The War to End All Wars

Steven's choice to leave the Doctor seemed like the right thing to do at the time; he wanted to make a difference somewhere, he was tired of not being able to help out properly and being bound by the laws of time and the Doctor's insistence that they never interfere was pushing him to the edge. But after taking the leadership of the Elders and the Savages, Steven has been deposed by his own daughters years later. Visited by his granddaughter in his exile, Steven tells her of his previous life, and of a time when he, the Doctor and Dodo landed on a world which was always at war, where everyone was conscripted and no one ever came back from the front, and how they found themselves swept up in the tide of that war and ended up holding guns on a front light years from their own planets.

So it didn't go so well for Steven, did it? Mister high morals and all found himself booted out as soon as they didn't need him anymore; got themselves established as a democracy, rebuilt their world, had no use for a king, which is pretty much a dictator, and all because Steven wanted to show them the way to a proper society.... ohhhh.... hang on a second... they got it, didn't they? Was this actually a plan?

And on the other side of the episode, speaking of things not always being the same in the background, this war that Steven and Dodo are separated and sent off to fight in doesn't add up. The enemy is described as inhuman monsters without mercy and Steven immediately suspects that the Daleks are nearby. But no-one has ever seen the enemy, no-one has ever come back from the front. And on both sides politicians come and go all promising to win the war and restore peace, but the war continues like an automated process.

It's interesting that in his older age Steven is now speaking in parables, likening what's going on around him to his early years with the Doctor and drawing a moral from the story. This does, though, make for an opportunity to tell two stories at the same time which is great - until now Steven has just been relating his point of view but now we get his own story at the same time, much as we did with Ian, Susan and Vicki with their post-TARDIS adventures. Steven is far more isolated in both stories than he has been before: exiled in one, and taken from his friends in the other. One would surmise that Dodo would have her own tale to tell as well, but, alas, still no sign of Jackie Lane on the Big Finish roster. The war, though, is a convenient way to sideline her without falling back on the tactic of having her make a new best friend and run off for an afternoon shopping or something.

But taking the place of the old companions is someone new here: Steven's granddaughter Sida. She's not just here to be told a story, though; she is fully cast and voiced by Alice Haig and her presence will form something of a trilogy for Steven's post-TARDIS life, effectively making her into a companion for Steven...

NEXT EPISODE: THE FOUNDING FATHERS

Return of the Rocket Men

As a young pilot on his 21st birthday, Steven Taylor fell afoul of the dreaded Rocket Men. Hijacked and brutally beaten he was as good as dead until he was rescued by what appeared to be one of the Rocket Men's own number. Years later while exploring a new colony world with the Doctor and Dodo, Steven discovers the Rocket Men in action once again... the same group of Rocket Men... on the same day... The TARDIS has brought Steven right back to his first encounter with the pirates.

As with the first appearance of the Rocket Men the narrative takes on a question to give the whole story an emotional hook; for Ian Chesterton it was realizing his emerging feelings for Barbara Wright, this time for Steven it is his gradual realization that one day it will be time for him to leave the Doctor and have his own life again. When do you know? That's the question being asked of Steven, just as it was of Ian.

The Rocket Men they face this time are a bit of a pale shadow of what they were; they're still nasty brutes but without Ashman to lead them they have broken down into different factions and are fighting each other for territorial rights as well as pirating the space lanes for plunder. Van Cleef is the leader of this particular group and he's really just a thug; on his first encounter with the 21 year old Steven he delights in punishing and humiliating him in front of the other Rocket Men; he leads through fear. The Doctor points out later in the tale that men like Van Cleef are merely bullies, and bullies themselves are inherent cowards, and he's right of course. Van Cleef relies on intimidation first and foremost, and even adopts the use of an antique handgun as his claim to fame (much akin to the way a barbed wire baseball bat is used as a symbol of power in the current series of The Walking Dead). Stylistically I am still not sure if they're supposed to evoke The Rocketeer or Boba Fett... the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

Oh yeah Dodo is in this one again, but aside from Peter Purves managing to imitate her Cockney inflection when she has lines, you wouldn't know it. There is a convenient female character the same age as Dodo on the frontier planet for her to immediately be best pals with (this is something that happens in almost all the Companion Chronicles and in Bunker Soldiers) so she can be shunted off to the side to make tea or have girl talk. Dodo's ongoing sidelining in the extended universe doesn't really give her character much chance to grow beyond it's rather simple origins, although Man in the Velvet Mask does allow for some interpretation of her character to show she is not really this chirpy happy kid all the time. Now if only Jackie Lane was interested in doing some of these herself, Dodo could be better represented; in fact of the entire cast of actors who played companions, Jackie Lane is the only holdout when it comes to returning to character for Big Finish (aside from those actors who passed away before the range started like Jacqueline Hill, Adrienne Hill, Michael Craze, Ian Marter and Gerald Flood). Lane's disdain towards the program after her eventual departure from the series probably has a lot to do with that, but if Janet Fielding could be persuaded...

As with some of the other Companion Chronicles tales, there is not a sense of being told after Steven has departed from the TARDIS crew so the story does not need to be held off and could be enjoyed right before The Savages. The story narrative references having spent some time in Russia but handily doesn't mention what went on there, so this could easily follow Bunker Soldiers and not leave it off in uncertainty land.

Steven's next adventures, though, are definitely after his time in the TARDIS, where we get to see how life as a leader has treated him...

NEXT EPISODE: THE WAR TO END ALL WARS

The Oliver Harper Trilogy

The Perpetual Bond

It's London in the 1960s, and as the world emerges from under the still recent clouds cast by the War, commerce carries on. There's money to be made out there, people are getting rich on the dividends. In among the bowler-hatted gentlemen is one Oliver Harper, a man with a secret who has stumbled upon another: there are aliens running the stock exchange! Nobody is going to believe him if he tries to tell them, he's got to run, he's got to get away before the police come for him. What he needs is a fast escape. And someone who'll believe him. And then along come the Doctor and Steven.

The start of an interesting trilogy with a new companion, Perpetual Bond picks up in the time after the finale of The Dalek Master Plan. Sara Kingdom is dead. Katarina is dead. Bret Vyon is dead. The loss of so many friends is weighing heavily on Steven, and he is realizing that everyone who meets the Doctor is really only living on borrowed time. Foiling an alien invasion and helping Oliver is just what he needs - until he realizes that the Doctor isn't exactly eager to take on this fight. The letter of the law is on the aliens' side and what they are doing is not illegal, so it's up to Steven and Oliver to figure this one out.

I have but one minor complaint about the continuity here; Steven refers to having been in London recently but is referring to the events of The Suffering. Since Perpetual Bond was written the Early Adventures range was started which saw Steven in London again in An Ordinary Life not to mention a very brief stint in episode 7 of The Daleks Master Plan which came after. Small quibble, I know; maybe he was just relating the closest visit to Oliver as not to confuse him too much.

It's a bit of a change from the usual dynamic in the TARDIS; with the exception of The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve there has always been a female presence in the companion ranks, so to add another male to the roster is a departure indeed. Big Finish are not afraid to wade into the waters of creating their own companions, though; Oliver is just one of many they will introduce into the series but as this continuity blog runs he would appear to be the first. He fits the bill alright: action oriented, young, and has a bit of a backstory but unlike certain angles of the new TV series it's not going to be all about him. He's also a bit of a period character given that he's from the same London as Barbara and Ian, but given the era of the series this is set in he's very much a modern man even if Steven sees him as something of a primitive from his point of view. Tom Allen provides the voice for Oliver and he is very much of his time with a lot of "jolly" this and "old boy" that - sounds quite natural coming from him. He keeps his cool in some strange circumstances and is not at all skeptical about what he sees - good companion material for sure.

Does it make sense to add a new companion right now? Yes, I think it does. Oliver's presence should be seamless as there is a discernible gap between Dalek Master Plan and Massacre, so realistically the space could get filled up with a lot of adventures with the Doctor, Steven and Oliver... just the guys. And although Peter Purves is telling this story from a past perspective, with additional dialogue in his Hartnell impression, there's no sense of this being from his post-TARDIS life so it can be enjoyed right where it is meant to be. As introductory stories go, Oliver Harper is off to a pretty good start...

The Cold Equations

It's his first trip in the TARDIS and Oliver is close to death. The time machine has landed on a space station in the future where aliens are salvaging the ruins of an abandoned planet below. But in space accidents happen and when one does, it proves to be almost the end for Oliver's days on board the TARDIS before they even get started. And to make matters worse, he, along with the Doctor and Steven, is going to die a criminal, their names in a database listing crimes they have yet to commit, and among them, Oliver fears, is the secret he ran from in London.

The story of Oliver's time in the TARDIS continues in a kind of jigsaw puzzle sort of way with the segments of the story being told out of order. The effect is a good one and it's been used before, with the story segments coming closer and closer together until finally events do run in a linear fashion at the climax. There are mysteries to be resolved - the name of the planet over which the space station is oribiting is a big one, and Oliver's secret finally comes to light as Steven presses him to see what he did to get on a criminal roster in the future.

But while Oliver gets a bit more development in his role as companion, Steven really gets a chance to remind us all that he is a space pilot and uses his knowledge of physics to survive the ensuing chaos that comes. This makes Cold Equations a bit of a heavy technical piece for Peter Purves to recite, but he performs marvellously, and there's never for one second a sense that he doesn't actually know what he is talking about.

The First Wave

Knowing that they have a criminal past still very much in their personal futures, the Doctor takes Steven and Oliver into the past to confront their destiny on a planetoid called Grace Alone. Oliver is frightened, feeling the inevitability of his situation crushing in on him. Steven is angry that the Doctor brought them there; he still thinks the Doctor can avoid this and change the past. The Doctor knows this can't be the case though and presses on to make sense of all of this - and discovers an alien presence.

The trilogy ends here with the appearance of the Vardans, a race of being made of energy who can travel along any wavelength. They have detected the radio transmissions beaming from Earth and have come to investigate, and accidentally killed everyone on the planetoid. This is their first appearance in series chronology this way but this race was first introduced in 1977 in The Invasion of Time. Plugging them into the series so much earlier than their first broadcast appearance might seem like a risk, but the events on Grace Alone do not impact those in the future of the series at all; the Doctor would have knowledge of the Vardans next time he meets them but would not make reference to the events here. Simple, I guess.

Oliver's adventures in the TARDIS end here, tragically, adding one more body to the trail behind Steven and the Doctor. Steven does not lose his tempter just yet - the death of Anne Chaplet is still ahead of them as the catalyst for the rift which will open between them. Oliver's end, though, is his own choice and not at any prodding from the Doctor; Oliver knows that he can't go back where he came from and his fate seems sealed so he makes what he feels is the noble choice and saves his new friends.

How does this addition of a new companion impact continuity overall? It doesn't, not in any real sense; these stories do not contradict anything that was done on the TV series, nor do they create any events which would impact the other episodes around them. No need for any of the handy alternative universe cop-outs then. Another one scored for Big Finish, then.

NEXT EPISODE: THE RETURN OF THE ROCKET MEN

Mother Russia

While he was still travelling with the Doctor and Dodo, Steven went to Russia in 1812 while Napoleon's army was marching it's way to Moscow. The TARDIS put them down near a small village where they met the people and stayed with them a while - months, even - and became part of their lives, part of their families. But with the impending invasion by Napoleon's forces there was a growing sense of fear, and that WAS only heightened when something fell from the sky - a visitor from somewhere else...

Hang on a sec...

Russia. Invading army. The TARDIS crew staying a while. Shape shifting alien.

Is this Bunker Soldiers again...?

Well it's not, although a lot of the elements have been reused here, whether intentionally or not. The differences are notable as well, though; the Doctor and company are staying here by their own choice instead of being held and the TARDIS kept from them. This time they are staying with the people, not with the ruling class. And the alien menace they face is not motivated the same this time, nor has it been hanging around for a long time waiting to be awakened.

Oh wait there's another similarity though; Dodo is not really that active in this one either. I would say she has a bit more of a role in Mother Russia though, and her outlook on staying with the Russians is different with her actually enjoying the visit more. She plays the piano as well, which I find a weird thing to have laying around in a Russian peasant home, but it's not "The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon" (direct reference to The Gunfighters is made by Steven).

The action in Mother Russia is, I find, better presented even if one might say it's because it's in an audio format. Whereas Bunker Soldiers while great in actual detail was struggling to be either a historical take or an alien sci fi tale, Mother Russia feels like it succeeds better. Maybe it's the consistency of having it all narrated in first person by Steven rather than jumping viewpoints from chapter to chapter. And this is managed even when Peter Purves is playing the Hartnell role as the Doctor for the first time - this was actually the fifth of the Companion Chronicles line and Steven had not yet been featured so his first attempt at doing his William Hartnell impression was good but yet to be refined to what it is today.

So the question is in a continuity context, can both these stories exist in the same universe or do we have to discard one (I hate the whole "Oh it's just a parallel universe" excuse)? My thought? Yes, they can. I'd place this one first having a more direct link to The Gunfighters and then allow a few more stories to fill up between this and Bunker Soldiers and assume that any references made to being in Russia again would be made in the months between the TARDIS landing in Kiev and the start of the novel. Mother Russia, in fact, doesn't need to be placed here as a retrospective by Steven at all as it does not reference him having left the TARDIS yet and could be told just a few minutes after they depart, not years later around a campfire.

Steven has more tales to tell, and next up he'll be telling three...

NEXT EPISODES: THE OLIVER HARPER TRILOGY

The Man in the Velvet Mask

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Dodo to a twisted version of post-revolutionary France where the Revolution never ended and terror is everywhere. The Doctor is falling ill and having trouble concentrating, and Dodo falls in with a troupe of travelling players who draft her into service in an unsavoury role. The Doctor becomes a prisoner of the Bastille and meets the mysterious Le 6, the longest imprisoned man in France, while the Marquis de Sade and his adopted son Minski rule. But there's still another layer to what is going on; the Doctor knows that history has been tampered with but even he does not realize the extent of the events in France.

I have to confess that the first time I read this in 1996 and here I am 20 years later plunging back into it with only vague memories and impressions of the text. It was like reading it again for the first time and it was so tremendously enjoyable to do so; The Man in the Velvet Mask is an absolute joy. The atmosphere of fear in the twisted version of Paris is palpable in the novel; one can never imagine the sun every rising on this place with all the sinister goings on. The Marquis de Sade has a well earned reputation in history for his writings and views on extreme liberal sexuality, but coming with that is a sense of depravity which infects the city of Paris as a whole. Sade himself is not entirely to blame for what is going on, though; his son, Minski, is the real twisted devil of the novel, callously experimenting on people as if they were just objects, although to his mind they are there just to serve him.

Rampant sexuality spills over from the Bastille to the city outside where the players are routinely getting it on together (their carry-on is much akin to that of the players in Moulin Rouge some years later) in the name of their art, immersing themselves in their roles to such an extent that they do not even go by their real names. Dodo becomes one of them to replace the missing character Sophie, and attracts the attention of one who beds her repeatedly. This has to be one of the more shocking things about this book - the sheer amount of sex that is thrown into  the narrative. There was intent for this range of novels to evoke the feel of the era in which it is placed but this one is way out in left field when read right after hearing a classic episode on audio. The new series on TV has all sorts of innuendos and tee hee moments to get fanboys and girls all a-giggle but this is just a few adjectives shy of soft porn, at least by Doctor Who standards. Dodo is a bit of an unlikely choice to plunge into this realm, but then again we don't really know her very well as most of her short screen time has been lost who is to say this is not the real her? Is all the cheerful perky teenager-ness just a show? Maybe - she confesses that she is not handling the travels with the Doctor very well, so there is more going on than just being glib; she already admits that she is something of a player already having been raised by an aunt and having to adopt a different accent to impress people. In Mask she even drops into something of a deep funk, some of it from remembering how her simple case of the common cold nearly wiped out humanity in The Ark. If she's been putting up a front for so many years already who is to say that she doesn't have a breaking point. And if Dodo was so horny all the time why did she never make a play for Steven while he was still around? It's a bit of a contrast to how when she was forcibly confined by an alien in Salvation she reacted in panic when he tried to seduce her, but then again she's been with the Doctor a bit and the travels may have affected her.

If the Doctor cottons on to Dodo's slutty affairs he doesn't let on - he's got bigger things on his plate, and that's outside of what's going on in Paris. If it were anyone else you would think they were dying; senility gnawing away at perception, memory failing, body failing (even enduring a heart attack), but anyone even slightly familiar with the series knows what's coming: the Doctor is nearing the end of his first life. There have been hints and clues up til now in some of the expanded universe novels, but as far as the televised series went there was no notion of story arcs and foreshadowing back then, so he did not start to exhibit signs until the actual episode where he does regenerate. I like to think that the events in The Savages may have contributed to the Doctor's state in this novel, having been fed upon by the machines of the Elders and left almost a vegetable. It is unlikely, though, that it was actually planned to be a catalyst for the Doctor to regenerate, so I'll just think of it as a nifty coincidence.

So I liked it. I remember back in 1996 when I would speak to other fans about the novels there would usually be noses turned up at the mention of titles I happened to enjoy for the extreme departures they took from the mood of the series. My take on that kind of thing is simple: daily life doesn't always go on at the same pace or in the same mood; extreme things can happen and people can do extreme things in response. The odd blip in the tone of the series is not a bad thing, it's good to experiment and take the TARDIS crew into those dangerous places that are not just planets or Dalek bases.

But there were other tales with Dodo that were not told, not until Steven started looking back upon his days before he left the TARDIS...

NEXT EPISODE: MOTHER RUSSIA

The Savages

The TARDIS arrives in an age which the Doctor describes as one of peace and prosperity, and as far as he can tell it is everything he had hoped for, being welcomed into a city overseen by the Elders who bestow great honours upon him. Steven and Dodo are not as easily convinced when they encounter savages outside the city who are bent on throwing spears at them. Dodo makes a chilling discovery about how the Elders manage to keep themselves alive, and the terrible price it exacts on the Savages, and when the Doctor makes his displeasure known, it seems he is goin
g to pay the same price himself...

It turns out that the Doctor has fans in the Elders; they have plotted the course of the TARDIS over the years and knew that he would come to them one day. They say that they know everything about him, but it's a mystery why they would expect him to condone their way of life, which is effectively vampirism. As it's a missing episode there's no way to verify if there was some sort of montage of the Doctor and company presented when the Elders speak of his travels, but if it ever were to be resurrected as an animated episode (or found in its entirety and remastered) I would figure there'd be a montage of the other incarnations of the Doctor presented.

All in all it's a pretty limp episode with a see through plot and not much imagination behind it. Scheming government, willfully ignorant people, victimized underclass... it's all there as part of a science fiction recipe but it's not really on par with Ian Stuart's Black other contributions to Doctor Who; I got my first taste of it in a Target novel published in 1986 and the bland black cover was not exactly inspiring. Eventually I got a hold of the audio episodes and heard what I was missing, but I wasn't too concerned about artistic merit; I wanted to hear Steven leave.

Yes, Steven Taylor is a memory after this one. After a year and a bit on the TARDIS crew Steven leaves to become the new leader of the newly liberated planet. His time with the Savages and the guidance he provides convinces them that he is the man to lead them out of this dark age, and as the Elders realize the errors of their ways and unite with the Savages to rebuild their world, they agree to follow Steven as well. It all seems a bit rushed and a bit unlikely as Steven was no longer pondering moving on from the TARDIS crew despite his arguments with the Doctor over the fate of Anne Chaplet in stories previous (both on screen and in the expanded universe media), but the time had come regardless (and in the real world of TV production there was change coming and as far as the BBC execs were concerned it did not include Steven). Steven has come a long way since joining the Doctor, going from disbelief in time travel to something of a hero when thrown into the plots of the Daleks or into history. His willfulness never left him, though, and the clashes with the Doctor were not arguments for arguments sake, he truly wanted to make a difference where they went and was frustrated by their inability to do so when it came to matters of historical fact. As the leader of the planet, he could do that at last. Dodo has not known Steven very long but reacts as if her big brother was off to join the navy or something - Steven was always protective of her as he was with Vicki, so what will become of her without his presence?

The TARDIS crew is down to two now. But for how long...?

NEXT EPISODE: THE MAN IN THE VELVET MASK