The Space Pirates

Somewhere in space a spacefaring society's future depends on the mining and use of a mineral called argonite; the material is touted as almost indestructible and is used to make space vehicles. A group of space pirates have begun a campaign of theft, blowing apart navigational beacons and salvaging the argonite for their own purposes. Space security is onto them and is working on a plan, but prospector Milo Clancy is also investigating in his own beat up old ship, and on board one of the sections of a recently attacked space beacon he finds the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. They have their own interest in the argonite pirates: the TARDIS is on another section of the beacon and without it they are stuck in this time zone.

I wouldn't say this is the best one out there, but visually all I have to go on in episode 2 where most of the action takes place inside a stuffy section of space beacon and various command bridges of various spaceships. The whole thing has echoes of an American western drama with Clancy more or less just being a prospecter with his claim being jumped, right down to his costume which is at odds with the futuristic costumes of the rest of the contemporary cast. Although, I don't know if anyone else saw it but I am sure General Hermack isn't wearing pants when he is in the office of Issigri Mining. Puts one in mind of characters on Futurama.

For a 6 part story there's not a lot happening; there's more running around in corridors in an old mine than necessary for a start. The V-ship of the local military is no starship Enterprise and seems to take forever to get anywhere to be of any use to anyone. The effect isn't bad though, nor is that of it's minnow-class fighters; I would have liked to have seen more of the ships but with five of the episodes missing it's all about using the imagination.

The good news, though, is that this is is last story to be missing anything; from here on in all the televised episodes exist and can be watched to present day. The BBC Radio Collection has fulfilled a vital role in enjoying the first years of the series - without the audio CDs there would be little means to enjoy it all save for the novelizations and the jumbled missing episodes compilations. The success of the BBC Radio Collection would make the future for Big Finish a worthwhile gamble; if fans would listen to audio of televised episodes, then they would certainly be interested in original cast recordings of new material.

This would be the second last adventure for the current TARDIS crew, with the next one seeing them part ways, but that finale is still some ways off given the amount of new material that has been made to go in this space. Starting with a novel.

NEXT EPISODE; THE MENAGERIE

Foreign Devils

The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe to China in 1800 when the opium trade is bringing drugs across borders for massive profit and at the expense of the people of the Empire. Something referred to as a spirit gate becomes active and transports Zoe and Jamie ahead to the year 1900, followed by the Doctor in the TARDIS, to a country mansion where the descendants of the opium merchants are enjoying a soiree. The party is effectively over, though, when the first of the murders takes place. On hand is a young expert in all things mystical named Carnacki, and together with the Doctor the investigation begins. But the ante is upped when the entire house and its guests are removed from space and time altogether and the killings continue.

This is a bit different, but it’s a Telos Novella so one would expect it to be. Without the luxury of a couple hundred pages the pace is a bit faster than normal, but so far not at the expense of the stories Telos have given us. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: it’s a shame that they only gave us 15 titles in their run. Still, there are 11 more of these gems out there to enjoy after this one.

Foreign Devils is a bit of a departure here as it features a guest star; the character of Carnacki is actually a fictional investigator written by William Hope Hodgson in 1909, very much a Sherlock Holmes for his time. The rights around Carnacki’s adventures were out of copyright so the character was included with ease and Andrew Cartmel’s novella came together wonderfully. Cartmel’s name is synonymous with the Sylvester McCoy era when he served as script editor for the final years of the classic series, and having him write for a Doctor other than “his” seems odd, but man he does it well. Maybe it’s something about the short quirky Doctors he likes, but reading the Doctor’s lines one can hear Troughton delivering them. The same can be said of Zoe and Jamie – although Jamie is missing for most of the story which leaves Zoe to do her thing disguised as a chambermaid at the party while the Doctor roams freely. Zoe’s indignation at having to assume this role as a servant is well presented, especially when it becomes clear that one of the senior male staff is all too willing to pimp her out for the sexual pleasures of the attending male guests, and he mistakenly begins with the Doctor.

The whole tone of Foreign Devils takes on more of a supernatural feel than a science fiction one; there’s a seance, mysterious marks left on the dead, and then there’s the whole bit with the house being suspended among the stars and possibly a reanimated corpse stalking the property. The Doctor doesn’t even begin to try to offer scientific explanations about what is going on, which infuriates the logic-driven Zoe to no end. Indeed the Doctor’s methods of getting her to think differently about what is going on mirrors the relationship between the seventh Doctor and his companion Ace, so there’s Cartmel’s area of expertise right there, and a reason to have Jamie out of the way for a bit to allow it to happen. Carnacki himself travels with a companion of his own, one Celandine Gilbert, who is a spiritual medium and can communicate with the unknown, as well as pull off a few telekinetic tricks here and there to add to the show, but their relationship is more emotional than that of the Doctor and his companions – they are lovers, which makes suspicion of Celandine’s involvement in the ensuing murders that much harder for Carnacki to take.

Given the grim goings on of The Indestructible Man this adventures is a lot lighter in tone, even has some comedy tossed in, and would take place after some time had passed to heal the wounds of the previous adventure. The crew are not as tight a unit as they have been either, with Zoe referring to Jamie as annoying, their closeness not really solidifying. There is a mention of Zoe being used to the canned air of the Wheel as opposed to fresh air so it could possibly have taken place sometime after The Invasion (or now The Isos Network), otherwise, though, there are no clues as to its placement in continuity. This is as good a place as any.

NEXT EPISODE: THE SPACE PIRATES

The Indestructible Man

In the year 2068 the Earth's first interstellar war comes to a sudden and uncertain end; the alien Myloki, a race not actually seen at all during the war, disappear leaving the people of Earth wondering if they won or not. Their questionable victory centres around the Indestructible Man, who as his name suggests cannot die. In 2096 the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive on a desperate Earth where social order is decaying and only a semi-secret organization called SILOET is holding things together. The awful truth begins to dawn, that the Myloki are coming back. Once again all attention focuses on the Indestructible Man and the search for him. But is he enough?

This has got to be one of the most bloody and horrifying novels of the BBC Books range. Simon Messingham creates a version of the future that is so opposite to what Doctor Who has portrayed before that you might think you're reading something completely different. Well, you'd not be too far wrong there are this one is a homage, if you will, to several other TV series that shared the 60s with Doctor Who, most notably Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, and Quatermass. The first time I read the novel I didn't know any of the references at all and thought Messingham was just a mad genius the day he wrote this. Now that I have researched it and read it again I see he was still a mad genius just on some other levels; the military organizations he dreamed up were really just someone else's with a different name, even if they have grown from the UNIT organization headed by the Brigadier. But where he might have cheated on some of his content and characters, he did some interesting things with setting and the overall mood of the story.

Messingham has already delivered a similar vision of Earth with his mind-bending tome The Time Travellers which saw the first Doctor and company lost in a future version of Earth where time was in flux from temporal interference. The links there were to some television episodes from the show's future seasons (The War Machines, Remembrance of the Daleks) but the vision of Earth was very much the same as we are offered here: there is unrest, people are living in horrid conditions, the truth about why the world has crumbled is kept from the people while military elites attempt to maintain control. Given that the novel takes place over several months in 2096 it is worth remembering that the Daleks are set to invade within 60 years and there was certainly no mention of Earth being decimated by another war before then unless the Myloki attacks are covered up and assumed to be the Daleks by the time they arrive. There is also the possibility that these events take place within the bubble that was the flux state of the Earth during The Time Travellers and once that particular quandary was solved this future would never happen. I normally don't like the notion of a reset button on history because it seems like too easy a way out when continuity gets blurred but this time, given the author is the same and the circumstances are very similar, it just might be the right fit.

There is, however, the effects of this adventure on the TARDIS crew to consider. Jamie and Zoe see the Doctor shot in the head and as far as they can tell he is dead. Both flee into the world outside the SILOET compound they arrive in, both terrified and alone, and in Jamie's case, wounded. Zoe is enslaved, beaten up in prison and almost marries a man. Jamie turns practically feral, joining a military unit and becoming a killing machine. The Doctor, meanwhile doesn't die but also doesn't regenerate due to medical interference, and months after recovering is dismayed to see his companions broken and turned into nightmare versions of themselves. There's no real indicator of where this one falls within their time together, but the close proximity of the first few stories of season six (Dominators, Mind Robber, Invasion) means it isn't during the early days. Zoe makes a reference to a "failed transmat system" which at first I assumed to be T-Mat and thought this shoulf have gone before Seeds of Death but the years are wrong; then I realized she is in fact referring to the Sol Transit System of the New Adventures future history cycle novel Transit. But after all is said and done there is going to be a lot of healing needed before the crew are themselves again. Zoe does remark that their friendship bond is something not easy broken and they would have to be pried apart by force. Forebode.

But it's no surprise that Jamie and Zoe turned the way they did for the story; they had to survive. And everyone else around them was pretty much in that space already between desperate military commanders and rebellious factions rising against them and ordinary citizens trying to make it to the next day. We're not talking the level of graphic violence like in Combat Rock but it's not too far off. Most of it is gun related, aside from the few physical altercations including violent outbursts from Jamie. Jamie becoming a murderous thug isn't really that much of a surprise; he was, in his own time, a fighter and a killer when he had to be. Zoe realizes that in her efforts to stay sane she almost embraced the way the system worked. Neither of them had much hope as they thought the Doctor was dead and gone, and the rest of the planet had no hope as they were just waiting for another wave of Myloki attack to finish them off.

The book is 283 pages but felt like it was going to take forever with its small print making my eyes go crossed after reading for too long. I think there was some compromise made with the series editor about cutting material and the solution was just to print in small font to get it all on the pages.

But from a longer effort to a shorter one we go now, to a Telos novella to be precise...

NEXT EPISODE: FOREIGN DEVILS