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
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
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