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