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