Prison in Space

The TARDIS accidentally lands in the rooftop garden of a city complex far in the future, and the crew are arrested for trespassing. The garden is not a public space and is for the exclusive pleasure of Chairman Babs, the leader of Earth, and the offence of being there sends the Doctor and Jamie to a prison satellite while Zoe is taken for conditioning to take her place as a superior being in society while the worst of the inferiors languish in the prison. The truth comes out that male humans have been branded as the inferior members of society and the females have taken over completely, and it is up to the Doctor, like any prisoner, to attempt to escape.

Oh, this again is it? The perceived feminist agenda coming to full on fruition? I thought we dealt with this in Galaxy Four with the Drahvins. Well, here we go again it seems. Ever since the feminist movement started there have been men scared to death of it, figuring that it wasn’t about equality in the slightest, but just motivated out of revenge for the long struggle faced by women over the ages. And hey one can sometimes see why; we’ve seen some of those people on the news screaming about what they feel needs to be done to the male anatomy to make them feel avenged. And it still goes on to this day and age with some nervous males seeing every female lead in anything dramatic as some subversive move to champion women’s rights further and push men down the totem pole that much more.

Wow.

So here we have Prison in Space which is a script that was submitted in the 60s for consideration as a television episode but it was declined by the production team and sat for almost 40 years in Fraser Hines’ garage. The script came to light when the Big Finish team started putting the Lost Years series together, and with a few tweaks it was finally put out there. The tale is more of a comedy than anything and the anti-male rhetoric is ramped up accordingly, although there are bits where it might have gone too far and wisely it was held back from that point, for instance Chairman Babs was not referred to as Chairwoman Babs at all, nor was there ever any mention of womankind thrown out there.

One gets the idea that there was supposed to be a great deal of physical comedy as well and much of it is captured in the narrative bits, although Fraser Hines has admitted to waving his hands about and physically acting in his sound booth while doing his lines as the Doctor. Yes, he’s there again in both roles with Wendy Padbury along as Zoe still sounding very much as herself back in the day, although with a harder edge to her once she becomes a convert to Babs’ regime. Babs herself is a bit of a caricature and is referred to as a “toad of a woman” and one wonders if her hatred of men is just borne of the fact that she’s not attractive to them. She’s attracted to them, though; she takes quite a shine to the Doctor when he stands up to her and even after she has him flung into prison her thoughts dwell on him.

Prison doesn’t have any solid references to the televised serials around it so it’s safe enough to place it in the gap between The Invasion and The Krotons given that the first three serials of the season were played up to be back to back to back adventures. Where it might have gone if it had been produced is anyone’s guess. The possible reasons it was passed on are easy to guess; it might have been too grand for the effects budget and it might just have been too much of a comedy in a series which was playing itself a bit more seriously in those days. Comic moments show up in each of the tales that were produced that season but an actual full comedy story would just not have fit in.

But from the comic to the gritty horror we now go…

NEXT EPISODE: THE ROSEMARINERS