The Mind Robber

The Dominators are defeated but the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are not out of the woods yet; there is still the question of a localized volcanic reaction on the island on Dulkis. The TARDIS doesn't have the power to escape the lava flow and the Doctor resorts to a desperate measure: he jumps the ship right out of time and space to an unknown realm until he can get the necessary repairs made. But outside time and space is not safe either, and eventually the travellers are at the
mercy of an unknown force with an army of fictional characters at its command and a terrible plan for the Doctor.

Here's another of the rare intact survivors of this era, with all five episodes residing in the BBC Archive as well as on VHS and DVD. It's certainly one of the more surreal adventures out there, which is interesting seeing as the series was leaning into more actual science in this era. It's not like the TARDIS has not been outside of space and time before, though; back in The Celestial Toymaker the ship was pulled out and similarly the crew were... well... toyed with by an omnipotent being in control of the whole thing. The Doctor doesn't exactly reference this adventure, but in his warnings to Jamie and Zoe when they first arrive there he is foreboding enough to indicate he has not forgotten the experience. And just like in Toymaker the TARDIS is not a safe haven; the powers that are attacking them can easily invade the ship - in this case they can even break it down. After turning the exterior white first, that is.

And like in Toymaker, the cast is made up of fictional characters, and some of them are actually toys - large fearsome clockwork soldiers - but the rest are snatched from the pages of popular works of fiction like Gulliver, Medusa, Rapunzel and a host of others. The characters do not have free will of their own and can only do or say what they have done and said in their fictional contexts, although Rapunzel seems to have a bit more free dialogue. Free will does exist for the TARDIS crew, and the truth emerges that they can influence things around them by their belief, or they can equally be controlled by it. There's a particularly horrific moment where Jamie and Zoe fall victim to the powers of the realm and are turned into fictional characters themselves by being squashed in between the pages of a massive book.

Jamie has an additional moment of terror earlier in the tale; he is turned into a cardboard cut out without a face and the Doctor is provided with a jumbled set of facial features with which to reconstruct it. And he gets it wrong. So Jamie spends an episode with a different face, played by a different actor as Fraser Hines himself was ill and couldn't perform. A versatile solution for sure, luckily the whole premise of the story allows for some creativity when faced with such production obstacles - indeed, the whole series itself was saved by a similar application with the introduction of regeneration. But Jamie does eventually get his proper face restored, but by Zoe with her fantastic perfect memory.

Unlike The Dominators before it I was able to watch this story before the novel was released, and the novel allows for some clever embellishments to the original, but not a lot; in print the story takes on a bit more of a fantastical feel unfettered by physical restrictions of limited special effects. It also helps that the novel was penned by the original author, Peter Ling, so some of this might be things he originally wanted to do, and equally some might be things he wanted to change after the fact. I'm not sure if I would have been disappointed if I read it first and then saw it realized in 1960's production values - either format works well to tell the story, although the small visual things that they could do like turning the TARDIS white and changing Jamie and Zoe's costumes white when they are lost in the void in episode one are far more striking to see rather than read.

 And then there's the moment when the TARDIS explodes. Saying it on page is one thing but to see the beloved police box blown apart and pieces sent spinning into the void, and seeing Jamie and Zoe clinging to the console... that's much different. There has really just been only one serious threat to the TARDIS back in The Edge of Destruction but as it was so soon in the series there was not enough time to be invested properly in the fate of the ship. Now, however, years later from a viewer's perspective, it means a lot more. Of course, if The Dark Planet had been made there would have been that invasion of the TARDIS by dark forces to witness... but no.

When The Mind Robber concludes, then, it flings the TARDIS and her crew right back into danger...

NEXT EPISODE: THE INVASION

The Dominators

A brutal regime known as the Dominators has landed on the planet Dulkis and with their robot servants, the Quarks, they have started a drilling operation on a remote island. A sightseeing tour of local youth happen upon them and are brutally massacred. The TARDIS arrives on Dulkis shortly afterward, binging the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe into the action. The Doctor sees the Dominators for what they are but also knows that Dulkis is a peaceful pacifist world and the natives will not act in aggression even in their own defence. The Dominator plan will have deadly consequences for the entire planet, and if the Dulcians themselves will not do anything about it, it’s up to the Doctor and company to once more risk their lives to stop an evil regime. 

Yes, these are the same Dominators from Lethbridge Stewart – Mutually Assured Domination but in their actual debut (and only) story. They are cold merciless killers determined to, well, dominate the galaxy, and they see every other life form as inferior to them. Their command structure is based on absolute obedience, and in this case Dominator Rago has his hands full not only with local resistance to his plans but also his subordinate, Toba, allowing himself to be distracted from their mission and go trigger happy and murder people and blow up everything in sight. It’s hard to find good help, and it seems it’s not exactly rare though; the leading Dominator in Mutually Assured Domination had similar staffing issues with his underlings, even if he had better versions of the Quarks. 

Ohyes the blocky child-voiced Quarks. Not exactly the stuff of nightmares but then again, there was some sort of effort made to make them a “cuter” breed of robot and having a nasty streak to them might give them an edge. They were never going to be the next Daleks, though, no matter what people thought. Boxes on legs. So yes one might suppose they were in the running for awkwardly designed nasties, but they had even less mobility than the Daleks; I don't see either species managing to win a race up the stairs. This issue was, however, addressed in Mutually by having those Quarks extend their legs for better mobility and better vantage points for shooting at targets. The fold-out arms on the front became a lot more versatile like a Swiss army knife in print. There’s an easy comparison to R2D2 there although this came first. They would make a particularly awesome action figure. Just sayin'.

And it’s not hard to see why Dulkis was so easily targeted for attack. I mean did you see how those people dress? Zoe adopts their local fashion to attract less attention and the result… an ungainly 1960s swimsuit and a tutu. It is her first full turn as a companion now, though, and despite the terrible clothes she does well; she shows off her smarts and all and still is a bit on the snooty side but all in all is showing great promise for her time in the TARDIS. Fashion wise, the men of Dulkis do not fare much better. If you ask me people who dress like that deserve what they get. At least it's one place where Jamie's kilt doesn't raise many eyebrows.

The Doctor does a particularly comic turn in this one when he realizes that the Dominators view intelligence as a threat and plays stupid as much as he can. The childlike grin that Troughton used so often came in quite handy here, as did his bumbling and flailing about when in a panic.

It's a bit disheartening to watch the extras on the DVD and hear so many people involved in the production piss all over it, though. It's one thing to mock it as a fan but to hear the professionals go at it as well... one sums up his thoughts by saying that of all the episodes that were lost he's annoyed that they have to have the entire five episodes of The Dominators in the archive as in his eyes it is hardly representative of the Troughton years. I remember reading the novelization of the story a long time ago in the 80s before I saw the episode on TV and maybe author Ian Marter was just that good at writing because I actually thought it was quite entertaining. Even when I first saw the serial on a Saturday afternoon on Channel 17 I was pleased, probably because it was the first complete Troughton story available at the time and to see it at all was magic. Still, yeah, once Tomb was found, and then Enemy and Web...

Still, onwards.

NEXT EPISODE : THE MIND ROBBER

The Story of Extinction

Somewhere in the far future, Victoria is teaching Jamie how to read as they, with the Doctor, join a group of explorers on the planet Amyrndaa to discover what happened to the civilization that once lived there. There is evidence all around in drawings and stories of monsters which brought about the end of the world but no trace of the monsters themselves. Fellow explorer, a popular girl from Earth named Selsey is only interested as long as it gets her noticed and gains her more fame on social media, but the Doctor realizes that the threat is still very real, and the monsters may still be among them.

So it's part Doctor Who adventure, and part social media commentary is it? It was just a matter of time before these new "first world problems" of craving attention and being liked by masses made it to one of these; the series has gone after pollution already, and in future will tackle drug use and racism, so why not this monster? Jamie and Victoria do not get social media, obviously, and Selsey's frantic attempts to explain it to them and make them understand how mega important it is to her is just pure bliss; someone should let the YouTube celebrity wankers listen to this one.

But social media is not the monster in this one. There's something else out there lurking which wiped out a whole civilization and could if not stopped get to Earth and do it all over again. Even the Doctor is vulnerable to the menace once it is revealed. We're not dealing with something as conventional as an army of Daleks or Cybermen, though; the enemy is not as tangible as that nor is it going to be as easy to defeat.

The previous two Companion Chronicles adventures have been very much Victoria's story to tell, but here there is more of it to be shared with Jamie as he takes a bigger role than in The Emperor of Eternity. The Doctor as well has a lot of dialogue now, provided again by Fraser Hines' fantastic impression of his old friend Patrick Troughton, but it is still a Victoria story in the end with her speaking to a police officer at the beginning of the story following a break-in at her flat in modern times. She is still referred to as "Miss Waterfield" so she has not yet married, or maybe she's a widow now and has reverted to her old surname... but it is definitely more modern times given the narrative around that event and the unusual visitor she describes.

For now, though, Victoria's post TARDIS tales have ended. Big Finish may well have more Early Adventures and Companion Chronicles coming with Deborah Watling back in her role (which still amazes her to this day given that she was only on the show for a year and by and large her televised episodes are mostly missing) and they will be a treat to behold as always, but out there in the future she is going to be back at least three more times. Just gotta wait for me to get there, though.

NEXT EPISODE: THE DOMINATORS

The Emperor of Eternity

Victoria remembers how the TARDIS once brought her, the Doctor and Jamie to China after colliding with an object in space. While the TARDIS recovers the crew are suspected of being first spies, and then of being keepers of a secret of eternal life; the Doctor is taken away to the Imperial City where he is commanded to surrender that secret to the Emperor, and Victoria and Jamie are left to mount a perilous rescue.

As a Companion Chronicle the story is again a shorter romp than usual, but it still feels like a more involved episode with both Deborah Watling and Fraser Hines reprising their roles as Victoria and Jamie (this was actually the first time they had worked together since Fury From The Deep). Despite being what is referred to as a "two hander" with two actors delivering the tale, this is still very much a Victoria narrative with Jamie's lines only providing dialogue, not anything of the narrative. The result there is Jamie doesn't so much feel under-used as he just feels peripheral... same sort of thing which happened in House of Cards with Anneke Wills. The Doctor doesn't seem to suffer this fate though, even if he never has a voice of his own; Victoria relates his words as they were spoken to her and her recounting is tinged with her own observations of the Doctor and his mannerisms, and the emotional connection she has with him as a sort of second father.

Emperor is a bit at odds with its placement within series continuity, being that it is a purely historical tale dropped into the "monster era" where every story had a new nasty monster to combat; there had not been a purely historical episode on TV since Jamie's debut in The Highlanders although the expanded universe of Doctor Who has provided a few more as well as this one. This is, however, the first time Victoria goes into the past; everything else has been the future (from her perspective anyways) or a few alien worlds. She is not a history buff herself, but she knows China to hear it mentioned, and being on Earth in an area she recognizes (kind of) should come as a great relief to her, until she realizes that people in the past could be just as horrible as aliens and future people. Still, as far as she's concerned this is all in the past, all hindsight; she's made her choice to live a normal life without the daily horrors, even if she can still remember them with startling clarity. Her personal continuity at this point is not really established but although she does not mention any family she could be telling the tale from anytime in her future. This might not seem very important at this point, but given where Victoria's future will take her, it will matter eventually.

Just not yet.

NEXT EPISODE: THE STORY OF EXTINCTION

The Great Space Elevator

Somewhere in Earth's future, a giant space elevator rises above the jungles of Sumatra to reach a platform in high orbit over the planet. Victoria remembers how when she, the Doctor and Jamie arrived they found communication with the platform cutting in and out; there was something wrong up there and the Doctor was determined to find out what and help if he could. Up the vast stretch of cable they rode in the elevator to confront a massing evil presence with plans for Earth and all its people... plans that would see the end of life on Earth if not stopped.

This one is told from a long time after Victoria's departure from the TARDIS; she's now been married and is a grandmother but has never spoken of her adventures to any of her family lest they think she is mad. As far as story placement, though, this would have happened shortly after leaving Telos at the end of Tomb of the Cybermen, before the continual terror of monster after monster would wear her down and make her eventually leave the TARDIS behind. This Victoria is still wide eyed with wonder and eager to see the universe, but her bravery is still shaky when things start to get tense. This is not the first time I have been grateful that Big Finish scripts do not call for a lot of screaming from the companions.

Production values wise this was the first time Deborah Watling returned to the role on audio so it was her and one other actor handling the lines; there was no real attempt to imitate the voices of the other characters at the time. The effect is
still good, though; simple and kinda bare bones storytelling but effective to have it all told from Victoria's perspective over a gulf of many years. The science of the space elevator itself is interesting; it's been a science fiction device for a long time to have a space station tethered to Earth, but in the last few years it's gotten a lot of press with theoretical models coming out of some respected science journals. The exact physics of it is something I can't entirely grasp, and as I hate flying I can only imagine how dizzying it would be... being a Toronto native I imagine it would be like the CN Tower just taller. Much, much taller.

The Great Space Elevator marks the start of three stories with Victoria speaking of her past but she is going to turn out to have one of the most interesting post-TARDIS lives ever, although it will be years before more of her life on Earth is revealed. For now though, there are some more flashbacks for her to experience before getting into her future...

NEXT EPISODE: THE EMPEROR OF ETERNITY

Lethbridge Stewart - Mutually Assured Domination

In 1969 there is a new player in the energy game, a company called Dominex which seems to have come out of nowhere promising great feats reconditioning radioactive waste for future energy. Atomic energy, however, is under suspicion and protest given that it can lead to weaponized radioactive materials, and protests rage across the nation and outside the very gates of Dominex itself. Reporter Harold Chorley is recruited by Colonel Lethbridge Stewart to get close to the action and see what is going on; the Colonel suspects alien involvement and he's right. Earth has been visited by a race called the Dominators, and they have brought along an army of lethal robot servants, the Quarks.

Mutually Assured Domination brings back the Dominators from their single appearance on Doctor Who which we have not quite reached yet in this blog, so any discussion about them and the similarities to their televised appearance would be wasted on this segment here. The Dominators do, however, attempt to be a bit more subtle here than on TV, posing as businessmen out to make an honest buck rather than just trying to take over the world through pure brute force. Their Quarks are kept out of sight for the most part to keep suspicion down, but the robots themselves are slightly rejigged from their original design, with additional mobility and far more weapons for destroying the unlucky hippie or soldier.

Lethbridge Stewart has been coming into contact with the aliens so much more now that people think he is starting to become obsessed in his drive to create a special taskforce to combat them. But after the London Event and Fang Rock, it is getting harder for the top brass to brush off his repeated proposals to create such a force; finding Dominex right under their noses is going to only cement his case. But Lethbridge Stewart isn't getting anywhere easily with this as Dominex have some powerful friends keeping him at bay. Enter Harold Chorley, the disgraced reporter who covered the underground terror of the London Event and was denied the chance to report the truth. But uncovering a scandal at Dominex, be it aliens of just dirty business, would be his way back into the trade. The two make uneasy allies but the mission is clear: expose Dominex for whatever they have going on.

Anne Travers is here again but she's not as involved as she has been previously; her work at the Vault keeps her out of most of the narrative but she's still there to give whatever advice and help she can. Maybe someone said something to author Nick Walters about Anne's role in The Beast of Fang Rock and how the tale seemed to be less about our brave Colonel and more about her; there's a feeling that she's mentioned here to keep the formation of the Colonel's team simmering but no more in case her presence overshadows him again.

Here, though, is a danger I was wary of as this series started: this is a major alien incursion, but when the Doctor and Lethbridge Stewart cross paths again, no mention at all. And in later times Lethbridge Stewart would tell someone that there had been two invasion attempts, this would make three. Bah. But on the other hand having had direct combat with an alien force would be why he's so cool about it when it happens again. And soon.

This is the last of the Lethbridge Stewart audio adventures; as I have had said before there are many novels and novellas but there's not enough time for me to dive in further just now. Maybe later. For now, there's a lot more Doctor Who...

NEXT EPISODE: THE GREAT SPACE ELEVATOR

The Wheel in Space

The TARDIS makes an emergency landing on a seemingly abandoned space ship floating near a giant space wheel near Earth in the far future. Taken on board by the Wheel's crew, they Doctor and Jamie meet an astrophysicist named Zoe who believes that the ship was not a derelict just drifting in space and has been brought here on purpose. Zoe is right, and the ship is revealed to be containing an infiltration force of Cybermen and they have infested the Wheel with Cybermats and weaken its defenses.

It's a simple enough story really, although the Cybermen's motivation is a bit hard to pin down. Invasion is, of course, the goal but it just seems a bit odd that the Cybermen resort to such extravagant methods of subterfuge and infiltration to achieve it. Physically they have changed again and it is the debut of the "tear drop" eye in their helmets, and they have a more solid look to their fingers as opposed to the pointed fingers in The Moonbase and Tomb of the Cybermen. They Cybermats themselves have changed and no longer have antennae and pupils in their eyes, which actually makes them look a lot more dangerous. And the Cybercontroller is back, although it's no longer a humanoid structure, just a machine with a brain stuck in it which appears over a video link. Same voice as before even if the Cybermen doing the dirty work on the Wheel sound different.

So with Victoria departed, Zoe is presented to the viewing audience as the next female companion. The differences between them are many, they come from different time periods (Victorian age vs space age), they have very different backgrounds (high society girl who comes from money vs working girl) their education levels are vastly different (Victoria being more intuitive and Zoe a genius who could tell logic a thing or two) and their relationships with the Doctor are worlds apart (substitute father figure vs "The Doctor's almost as clever as I am,") Does Zoe have an ego? It might seem like she does; she's the youngest person on the Wheel and she's arguably the smartest, but her smarts and logic have come at the price of her more human side; Jamie pegs it right away and routinely ribs her for being a computer herself without feelings. In fact a few people tell Zoe off for being cold and she just shrugs, nonplussed, like she doesn't know why it matters. None of her brains have gone to her head, so to speak. Zoe is just a reminder of the old saying "Nobody likes a smart ass,"

Wheel, like so many other episodes of its time, is missing several episodes and only episodes 3 and 6 are available to be seen on the Lost in Time DVD. Enjoying this one was another exercise in media hopscotch going between the BBC Radio Collection CD and the DVD to complete it, but as I have said before it's better than nothing. The novel of the story was published in 1988 which is when I first got to experience the adventure, and although the cover art is striking it gets the design of the Wheel, unfortunately, wrong. The one pictured is actually far more interesting than what was put on TV. The novel itself is something of a rarity; reportedly only 23,000 copies were printed and a warehouse fire destroyed a lot of them, so the book goes for a good chunk of change on eBay as a collectible. I had no idea I was sitting on a goldmine, but all things considered, I will keep mine just the same.

As one might expect, the TARDIS leaves the Wheel with Zoe on board looking for a new purpose in her life. Still wary from Victoria's departure and her reasons for it, the Doctor decides to show Zoe some of what she might be in for and an unusual rerun of Evil of the Daleks followed on BBC in the weeks afterwards, although it was meant that the Doctor was telling Zoe the story himself.

So while the Doctor tells Zoe a story, back to the aspiring Colonel Lethbridge Stewart and his final audio adventure for my project...

NEXT EPISODE: LETHBRIDGE STEWART - MUTUALLY ASSURED DOMINATION

Fury From The Deep

The TARDIS makes an unusual landing at sea, bringing the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria ashore at a natural gas refinery on the coast. The refinery is fed by several rigs out at sea, but recently contact has been lost at one and a strange heartbeat-like sound can be heard reverberating through the pipes. The TARDIS crew are initially mistaken for industrial spies and saboteurs, and even protesting hippies before their help is accepted by some of the base's authorities, but by then it is obvious that something is going terribly wrong, and a mass of attacking seaweed is at the heart of it.

Fury From The Deep is one of those stories which doesn't exist to be seen aside from a few surviving clips and the audio score recorded off-air at broadcast time, and as such it makes its way to the top of the list when people speak of which episode they wish to see returned the most. Once upon a time that was Tomb of the Cybermen from earlier in the same season, but once that came back it's usually Fury or Marco Polo, whichever way the winds of nostalgia are blowing at the time. We only have the word of people who saw it at the time for how good it was, although the audio and the bits we can get to see lend a lot of credibility to that claim. One clip which stands out as an example of a truly horrific moment is a scene where two men under the control of the weed creature attack a woman in her home by emitting toxic gas from their mouths. Their eyes bulge out, they emit a hissing noise and she chokes in agony and falls to the floor... the clip was removed from some broadcast copies to appease the censors which is why it is still around to be seen today. Of course, the fact that it can possess and control people at a distance makes it easy for the weed it infiltrate the base and slowly take over and remove the people who would otherwise complicate its plans.

Intelligent seaweed, though. Hmmm. Attacking plants have always been a good sci-fi go-to and we have had it before with some limp vines back in Keys of Marinus, so the real challenge would be how to realize an entire mass of it attacking. The Lost in Time DVD set has a few moments of film trims and a couple of clips which capture the seaweed monster's moments, and cleverly it was covered in foam for the most part as it rampaged across the studio or pulled an unfortunate extra off a ladder to his doom. Good call there; without the foam to hide its edges I have a feeling the seaweed monster might not have been so impressive. Still, unless there is another miraculous find out there (and do not think for one second I don't want that) the seaweed monster will be left to imagination mostly, which is how I first envisioned it when reading the super-sized Target novel adaptation by original author Victor Pemberton. Having the original script writer put out the story was a bit of a bonus, and around the time this was in print the originals were coming out of the woodwork; I'd have to go back and re-read it to be sure but I remember being impressed with the quality of the writing and the narrative prose when a lot of the other scripts were just churned out through the Terrance Dicks novelization machine with little extra added.

I think, though, that the real reason for Fury being such a mourned loss in the archive all comes from a couple of events in the script, one being the first appearance of the sonic screwdriver. These days the sonic screwdriver is brandished on a regular basis like a magic wand (because in literary terms that's exactly what it is) but when it first appeared on screen it was not with any flourish, it was merely something the Doctor was going to use to undo some bolts. "All done with soundwaves," he said cheerfully. Leading up to this, though, there have been a few instances in the expanded universe where upstart authors have all dropped reference to the device ahead of its actual reveal which I as a fan think is just silly.. all this jockeying to try and retcon the device's appearance and get the biggest fan wank for one's buck.

Fury has one more big moment of fame, and that's Victoria's departure. As the story unfolds she finds herself getting worn out by the constant running for her life, the endless attacks by alien menaces, and all the death which surrounds the Doctor, and this time she has finally had enough. She's in near hysterics a couple times just at the thought of all she has been through - it's surprising that she has lasted this long. She doesn't resent the Doctor or Jamie for what she has seen or what has happened to her but she's on the edge of a nervous breakdown by the time she says she wants to stay behind. And it's not just dropped on the audience; her decision to stay comes about halfway through the final episode and the Doctor leaves her to consider her options. Jamie tries to make her stay. There have been hints in the expanded universe novels and audios about her eventual departure, mostly in moments of introspection, and unlike with the sonic screwdriver I don't get too annoyed by that; it's character building, in the end, and the whole point of additional material (aside from making a buck off a franchise) is to expand on what we already know, and going a bit further into Victoria's psyche makes her eventual departure make a lot more sense - after all, she did not join the TARDIS crew to go adventuring, she did it because otherwise she would have been stranded on Skaro in the ruins of the Dalek Empire. She and Jamie were never lovers but Jamie's emotional response is pure heartbreak, and his anger at the Doctor's casual acceptance of her departure actually prompts the Doctor's own indignant response and a rare emotional outburst.

The TARDIS sets off with one less occupant, but things will not be quiet for long.

NEXT EPISODE: THE WHEEL IN SPACE

Lethbridge Stewart - The Beast of Fang Rock

A trail of coincidence is leading Colonel Lethbridge Stewart and Anne Travers towards the old lighthouse at Fang Rock. Rumoured to be the feeding grounds of the fabled Beast, the lighthouse has been at the centre of many strange events over the years, including multiple UFO sightings and a gruesome mass murder in 1902. The lighthouse is being brought back into service once more but there have been sightings of ghosts on the rocks and within the lighthouse itself. And one of those ghosts appears to be Anne herself.

This adventure is the closest that the Lethbridge Stewart adventures get to crossing right into Doctor Who - quite literally. The other two have made reference to the London Event and the Yeti in the underground, but this tale is a sort of sequel to a televised serial called The Horror of Fang Rock - the events of which are in the past as far as the Colonel is concerned, but still very much impacting the present. The ghosts which appear in the lighthouse are mostly from the past but are otherwise borrowed from sequences right from the script of Horror with all the characters identified by name except the Doctor (by then the fourth one). The Doctor's presence in Earth events has not gone unnoticed by other departments in government, and he has been code-named "cosmic hobo" after his presence was detected in other events such as the business at Gatwick Airport (The Faceless Ones). And Lethbridge Stewart doesn't realize it, but the mission he was on prior to coming to Fang Rock was to clean up another of the Doctor's visits to Earth (an eighth Doctor novel called Revolution Man). This sort of attention to continuity detail is particularly fun and is obviously not the work of an author just trying out writing for the range; Andy Frankham Miller must be a genius of sorts and should probably be writing for the new series.

Anne Travers knows more about the Doctor right now than Lethbridge Stewart. She has been working at a place called "the Vault" where all the leftovers from the London Event have been taken for examination and storage, along with a few other things which have been discovered over the years (one imagines that there are wrecked Daleks in there somewhere as there were in storage as seen in The Time Travellers). A lot of the things found there can be directly linked to the Doctor's presence, including what appears to be a crystal radio device found at Fang Rock following the 1902 massacre. And of course what else would a curious scientist do but start playing with the device to try and make it work again.

The Beast of Fang Rock eventually splits the storytelling between the Colonel and Anne, the latter managing to use an osmic projector to send herself back in time so the storylines runs parallel just separated by almost 60 years. There has been some criticism that Beast becomes less of a Lethbridge Stewart adventure and more of an Anne Travers story, although this device has been used before to split up the Doctor and his companions. Anne just seems to get more done than Lethbridge Stewart; she is more scientifically curious and asks the better questions, whereas Lethbridge Stewart is left to shoot at things - most notably at an alien jellyfish creature called a Rutan.

The Rutan is the antagonist from The Horror of Fang Rock , a shape shifting alien creature capable to delivering a lethal electrical shock to its victims. It's mean, it's cold and calculating, and anyone who has already seen Horror will be wondering how it can still be alive. I know I was one of them. Simple yet cop-out reasons are employed. They could have done better.

Three for three though as far as this series is concerned. Given that Lethbridge Stewart is proceeding on a linear course through his life the range can't go too far into his adventures and change who he will be when the Doctor meets him next there's only so many times they can do this sort of story, and as far as I can see looking ahead they do not. The next one I enjoy on audio will be the last I touch on in the blog, but before going there, it's time to rejoin the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria.

And the TARDIS crew will be one short by the time this next one is over...

NEXT EPISODE: FURY FROM THE DEEP

The Black Hole

The TARDIS is drawn to a research colony on the edge of a black hole, and the Doctor realizes he is not the only one of his people on the scene. Jamie and Victoria believe that a second member of the Doctor's people would be an asset on the scene, but the Doctor is nervous at the prospect. Constable Pavo, however, is eager to work with the Doctor, and the station's commandant, Flail, just wants the trouble sorted out, but as the Doctor becomes more involved in the perilous situation, he realizes that this is more than a dangerous situation; this is a trap.

It took a while but Big Finish finally produced something I did not enjoy very much. This is the one.

The Black Hole starts off with just as much promise as every other Big Finish audio has so far, with the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria all heading into a new adventure together, Fraser Hines doing double duty as both Jamie and the second Doctor once more and sounding awesome. On the other hand, though, there's Deborah Watling returning as Victoria and... well she doesn't do such a good job of regressing her voice back to her youth. Don't get me wrong, she delivers her lines with conviction and style but just sounds like an older lady - she's not been as fortunate as some of her peers to be able to sound timeless. So yeah that threw me off a little.

The other thing I didn't enjoy was not really anyone's fault; I just finished The Dark Path which also features another of the Doctor's people, so here we have another the very next tale. And as with The Dark Path this isn't just any old person from the Doctor's planet, it's another nemesis of sorts - last time the Master, this time the Monk (although this is supposed to be a secret but I have a feeling the few of you who read this aren't going to be too impacted by this revelation). If I had known that part a bit sooner I would have enjoyed this earlier, perhaps between Dreams of Empire and Combat Rock where an audio between two novels would have been a nice switch of medium. And of course far enough away from The Dark Path. Still, distanced or not there are a few similarities between the two, with there being other members of the Doctor's people hiding in plain sight in the narrative and both of them undergoing their own regenerations during the stories. It's a bit disappointing in a way to have the same plot elements re-used so near each other; I would have hoped an experienced author like Simon Guerrier would have done his homework.

And what of the Monk himself? It's a different incarnation for starters, but he's been made a bit manic, not unlike how the Master was played up when he returned to the series in 2007. Looks as if The Black Hole was influenced a great deal by the current state of the series, and we all know how I feel about that. The Monk was always referred to as a time meddler but this time out he's not really adhering to that m.o. at all; he's messing stuff up, sure, but he's more psychotic about it - less playful and now more focussed. And angrier. Fair dues there, though, the Doctor messed him up twice in the past, he'd certainly want revenge for that.

Here's a little something else in this one which... I'm not sure about. I've often said how I don't like it when authors put too much work into explaining the unanswered questions in the series which were meant to be throwaways - the exceptions being when they are really clever at it and it is just brilliant to behold (and those instances are few and far between) and Geurrier goes and tries to do exactly that by sending the Doctor and Jamie off on a mission in the middle of the story. It's a ways off before I reach this one but in a 1985 episode called The Two Doctors the second Doctor and Jamie cross paths with the sixth Doctor and his current companion at the time, and this little mission here in The Black Hole is meant to explain that little jaunt. I don't like it.

Oh well. Can't win em all I guess.

NEXT EPISODE: LETHBRIDGE STEWART - THE BEAST OF FANG ROCK