Inferno

A massive drilling installation in the UK is within hours of penetrating the Earth's crust with the aim to unleash a newly discovered energy source. UNIT is onsite to provide security, and along with the Brigadier and his crew are the Doctor and Liz Shaw. The Doctor has brought the TARDIS console with him to attempt some repairs, but at a critical moment he is slipped sideways into a parallel universe where a dictatorship rules over the world and the project is being run at a scientific labour camp. The drilling is much further ahead on this Earth, and the waste from the drill shaft has turned people into hideous deformed beasts. Without friends or credibility in this world the Doctor is condemned to be executed as a spy, provided the world doesn't end first.

For me Inferno is the most compelling episode of this season; it throws the Doctor into an environment where he is threatened at every turn and faces death minute to minute and it plays with the whole parallel universe concept to such an extent that we see characters we already know to be allies performing as enemies. The Brigadier is counterpointed by a Brigade Leader who is more of a coward backed up by thugs than a man of honour and pride. Liz Shaw in the other dimension is a soldier, not a scientist, although she had entertained the notion in university. UNIT itself does not exist, it is replaced with the Republican Security Force which enforces a regime in power since 1943. Clearly, this is a world where World War II did not end in favour of the allies. Parallel universes are a common science fiction angle usually used wrong with absolutely everything the opposite of what we would know in a regular series; in the Star Trek universe there are episodes across several franchises where characters travel to or from a Dark Mirror universe and we see those contrasts. Here in Doctor Who it's not presented as just one parallel universe but as several possible ones where simple choices have created new realities. Inferno is really the first time we see this in the series but it is not the last by far. In fact, parallel universe could be a handy way to write off everything that happened in the series from 2010 to present; somewhere else, the show has not slid into suckdom.

This particular parallel world, though, inspired some expanded universe fiction; this is the same parallel world where the Brigadier found himself in the spinoff The Schizoid Earth, and it pops up again a little while later in a BBC Novel.

Content aside Inferno has a distinct visual style; it was filmed on what looks like a gasworks or an oil refinery, the gritty location made to look even more desolate in the grainy film. It almost looks as if the world already ended here, so it's fit for an apocalypse. And in the parallel world version as disaster strikes the film is shot through a red filter to give it the look of a doomed volcanic spot. And there are the monsters, too; they're call Primords and have been turned into wolf-like creatures when they came in contact with green goo brought up from the drill shaft. They're not really the best visualized monsters - those fangs are clearly bought from a Hallowe'en shop - but the actors playing them either got coaching or developed some distinct shambling movements to make them a bit creepier.

Inferno is the last shout for Liz Shaw. Boy that year went by fast. And really, despite her being a scientist and being able to help the Doctor out with repairing the TARDIS and clever things, I felt she did not really get her fair shake. The late Caroline John played her very well, it's just a shame that we didn't get a second season with her. What we do have, though, are nine more adventures with Liz in them, some books, some audios. As I said, Caroline John has passed away so while they may write more books about her, we're not going to hear from Liz (literally) again after going through the Big Finish audios she made. Without those Liz would not have actually gotten a departure episode; when the series resumed the following season there was mention of her returning to Cambridge but that was all; the additional material gives us a chance to see how Liz's remaining days with UNIT went, and why she finally did choose to leave the Doctor's side.

NEXT EPISODE: THE EYE OF THE GIANT

The Ambassadors of Death

In high orbit above Earth, Mars Probe 7 has returned from a journey to our neighbouring red planet. The capsule has been in radio silence since it left Mars and the world waits anxiously to hear what has become of the astronauts. Space exploration is old news to the Doctor, but when a mysterious signal comes from the space craft he becomes interested. UNIT's investigation into the returning probe is suddenly hampered by a well organized and well equipped force determined to steal the capsule upon landing. The Doctor suspects there is something deeply amiss, a conspiracy on Earth which could start an interplanetary war.

It is worth noting that by sheer coincidence Ambassadors of Death was broadcast around the same time as the American space mission Apollo 13 was encountering significant difficulty on its mission to land on the moon. The parallels are interesting, and the public felt the same palpable tension that would have been evoked for the fictional public waiting for news from Mars Probe 7. Personally I preferred the dramatization in Doctor Who over another Tom Hanks theatrical dirge when Hollywood decided to have a bash at presenting the plight of the real world crew.

Ambassadors is an interesting one on a lot of levels, mostly to me for how it portrays the British Space Program as on par with or above that of the rest of the world with manned missions to Mars by 1970 and a fully functioning space centre to rival Cape Canaveral (although we never see this location again in the series). Here's where the debate about the UNIT years starts off: visually it looks to be the 1970s, but here I am writing this in 2017 and there has yet to be a manned mission to Mars in my lifetime so it's possible that these adventures were intended to be set in the 1980s, an argument which gets revisited a lot. But the concept of the British Space Program stays alive within Doctor Who right through to present day and who else but UNIT would be trusted with its security.

UNIT has its regular run-ins with the British Army here and there; most of it seems to be born out of some kind of envy or jealousy that a select group of British personnel now answer to the UN in  Geneva rather than to the home office. General Carrington in Ambassadors is definitely not a fan, and back in Spearhead from Space General Scobie may have been an ally but his Auton double seemed to have no problem mustering support against UNIT when it wanted it. This time there are operatives within the Ministry itself with some suspicions about UNIT, in particular about the Doctor and his lack of official existence. UNIT's "family" sees the return of Benton this episode; last time we saw him it was during the Cyberman invasion and here he is again and here he will stay for quite some time.

At seven episodes long Ambassadors gets a bit of a bum rap for being slow in spots, but I don't see that myself. The pace is even throughout, there is a lot for every character to do, with Liz Shaw kidnapped and operating on her own for most of the story (this following a high speed chase in Bessie) while in the company of the mysterious Ambassadors themselves. Despite the fact that these aliens were found on Mars, they are not Martians as we know them (Ice Warriors!) and are more humanoid and depend upon radiation to survive. We only see one without a space suit on, the rest of the time they are hidden behind fogged-up visors and protective suits. But damn they are creepy in some of the shots, notably with the sun behind one as it advances upon a lone UNIT sentry.

This is the third story of this season; it seems to be going by fast despite the fact that aside from Spearhead all the stories are seven episodes long. Liz Shaw is only here for one season but thankfully she like the others has had some chance at extension through the Big Finish ranges, effectively tripling the material with her as the first companion of the Third Doctor. Still to come, though.

THE BLAME GAME

Months into his exile the Doctor is paid a visit by none other than the Monk. His old adversary has heard of his predicament and offers to free him from Earth by taking him away where he can get a new time machine and get on with his travels. The Doctor agrees and leaves with the Monk but Liz has stowed away in the Monk's TARDIS, which soon breaks down itself due to the Doctor's exiled sentence.

Interesting to see the Monk back being all chummy with the Doctor - but you know this isn't genuine. The Doctor must as well but he's desperate to get away from Earth. He pretty much just walks out without thinking to say goodbye to Liz. The Monk doesn't seem to be as vicious as he was in The Black Hole so it's fair odds this is still his original incarnation from the Hartnell years when he was mischievous rather than bloodthirsty and vengeful.

It's the Doctor's character we get an interesting glimpse into here - he has already tried to run off in his own TARDIS once and is trying like hell to get it to work properly but when he gets a concrete opportunity from an old foe he forgets everything and wants out. One wonders if he had a plan to dump the Monk as soon as possible and make off with his TARDIS; not a very Doctor-ly thing to do but hey he's desperate by now. We've all been there.

Continuity wise there are few hints as to where this might be placed but with reference to the Autons and the Silurians but an early line in Ambassadors of Death placing the second and third stories of the season close, this is as good a spot as any really.

NEXT EPISODE: INFERNO

Old Soldiers

Many years into the future, the Brigadier pours a drink and toasts to absent friends. He recalls seeing men fall in service, both at his side and under his command, but in particular one old friend who was transferred to West Germany and then called out for his help. As a loyal friend the Brigadier attended and witnessed an incursion by an enemy that can walk through walls to attack, and when he needed help the Doctor came to his aid. The Brigadier muses that there are few old soldiers in the world, and death is a reminder of why.

Normally I leave the Companion Chronicles like this until a time after a character no longer appears in the series. giving them a bit more perspective on their time with the Doctor and time to get their new lives sorted out. This time, though, I have placed it where it is set in continuity, immediately following the end of Doctor Who and the Silurians. The Doctor is outraged at the Brigadier for blowing up the Silurian habitat and marches out of UNIT with the Brigadier wondering if he would see him again. The call for the Brigadier's help comes soon after and when he finds himself overwhelmed eventually he is surprised to have the Doctor come to his aid. We never really see it on screen and it's not explicitly said here either but there's a forgiveness granted by the Doctor; as the story is told from the Brigadier's perspective there's no insight into when the Doctor gets over what the Brigadier had to do in the line of his duty, but coming to his aid as he did is the sign that he understands what that duty is.

The other reason for doing this tale where I have is because the Brigadier is around a very long time in the series, across all the media and crossing paths with almost every Doctor over time. It's more effective to tell this story closer to the Brigadier's more active days with the Doctor than years and years later... cause it could take that long before I reach his final appearance. This is the only Companion Chronicle that Nicholas Courtney actually does as the Brigadier and he only gets a few more outings with Big Finish as it is. This is a unique character in the whole universe that is Doctor Who; no other has adventured with as many Doctors as the Brigadier, and no other has been called "the Doctor's greatest ally" (words from the Great Intelligence in the Lethbridge Stewart range) not even the infamous companion Sarah Jane Smith. It's a unique friendship stepped in blood and fire, there's no other like it in the series; indeed the Doctor's involvement with UNIT itself carries on long after the Brigadier is gone, and try as it may the new series has yet to really capture that again try as it might with other groups like Torchwood or the tremendously unlikely and boring Paternastor Gang on the new series circa 2010 to 2014.

NEXT EPISODE: THE AMBASSADORS OF DEATH

Doctor Who and the Silurians

There's trouble at the top secret underground nuclear research base at Wenley Moor. Mysterious power drains have put a strain on an already demoralized and exhausted workforce, but a death adds to the stress and triggers an investigation by the Brigadier and UNIT. The Doctor and Liz soon arrive as well and discover that the base is under attack from a race of reptile people called Silurians; the base has been built practically on top of their home where they have been sheltering for millions of years in suspended animation. The Doctor discovers that the Silurians pre-date humans on Earth and after being dormant so long are ready to emerge and take back "their" planet, which will mean the annihilation of humanity.

When Doctor Who went Earthbound under the Doctor's exile the storylines which could be used pessimistically were narrowed down to two: alien invasions or mad scientists. In a way it's not too unfair to put it that way; after all in a science fiction series there are not a lot of alternatives where one is staying in the same place all the time. Indeed, Spearhead from Space started the season with exactly one of those formula, the alien invasion, and Silurians looked set to follow the same path until the twist that the monsters in question were actually from Earth already. Humans now become the invaders in what is seen as a loose comment on aboriginal rights, with the show taking a slightly political edge to it. Given that it was the late 1960s when it was written and filmed, The Silurians is seen to have a few political metaphors in it, starting with the plight of the title characters and moving through to the distrust of civil servants as embodied by their portrayal in the script.

Metaphor was completely lost on me the first time I read this one; as with Spearhead I got hold of the

novel (which was re-titled Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters) first when in third grade and read that eagerly, although the fact that the Doctor on the cover doesn't really look much like Pertwee made me wonder if there was another regeneration I had missed somewhere. It took years before I saw the episode, and at the time all that was available was a black and white film print which loaned the serial a certain distinctness that the eventual colourized episodes seemed to lose (possible because the colourization was really just merging a colour video print with the black and white which made for terrible muddy colours). By then I was in ninth grade and after watching a few of the Earthbound stories my math teacher commented to me that they seemed more like murder mysteries than what we were used to, which is again the side effect of the confined Doctor on Earth if you ask me. In one of the Doctor's more humanizing moments he is seen working on repairing a vintage yellow car which he affectionately nicknames "Bessie"; with the TARDIS out of service this car will serve as his alternate transport throughout the Third Doctor era.

I love the Silurians as monsters though. Here they are an advanced civilization waking up out of a hibernation to discover that the humans have overrun their planet, much the same as when one goes back to one's cottage after a winter and discovering it full of mice or other vermin. They're not all as bloody minded as that though; not all of them want mass extermination and can see the Doctor's ideas for sharing the planet with humans as a possibility, but one would have to convince the humans as well as the Silurians to rise to that challenge instead of going to war. The Doctor is caught between the aggression of the Silurians and his newfound affiliation with the Brigadier, and while she may be a scientist, Liz can see that this is not going to be as cut and dry as the Doctor would like it to be. Here's a bit of naivety on the Doctor's part; he can see the solution but he doesn't get why the parties involved can't just switch off their instincts and coexist. Seeing just how wrong he is about things is something that could drive a wedge between the Doctor and the Brigadier.

Thankfully the potential of the Silurians is not ignored and they return eventually in the series, although their Big Finish and printed page appearances outnumber their televised ones. And they will also return in the new series but with a different and more Star Trek look to their realization; there are always complaints about actors in rubber suits on Doctor Who but when it comes to the Silurians their eventual "humanization" look really detracts from their menace. The originals were best, no question.

NEXT EPISODE: OLD SOLDIERS

Spearhead from Space

A swarm of meteorites slams down into the English countryside at the same time as the TARDIS makes its landing. The regenerated Doctor staggers out of the ship and collapses and is taken to hospital. As UNIT is already on the scene investigating the meteors, the Brigadier believes help is at hand when he hears of the police box found in the woods, but he does not recognize the Doctor after his regeneration. While the Doctor is recovering, an alien presence called the Nestenes is at work, insinuating itself into killer plastic dummies called Autons. The Nestenes have their sights set on Earth as a target for conquest, but by the time the Doctor and UNIT can act it may be too late.

Spearhead from Space is a marked departure for the series; when it hit the screens in January 1970 everything was new - opening sequence, colour picture, and a new Doctor all in one go. And to go with the new Doctor, of course, a new companion, physicist Liz Shaw who was resentfully drafted into UNIT to act as scientific adviser just before the Doctor's return. The episode also had the distinction of having been recorded entirely on film as an outside broadcast production, which makes it the only classic serial able to be transcribed onto blu-ray.

So a new Doctor... taller. A little more elegant than Troughton's Doctor was but Jon Pertwee retains a certainly playfulness that his predecessor honed to a fine point. He strikes an immediate rapport with Liz, speaking to her in scientific terms that she can relate to, even if a lot of the science she knows is child's play to him. And with the Brigadier there is a definite bond forged from their previous encounters with the Yeti and Cybermen (neither are referenced this time) although the Doctor isn't exactly keen on military methods of dealing with problems. Still, they do need each other; the Doctor has had a great chunk of his memory blocked and the TARDIS is grounded on Earth by the Time Lords as his sentence of exile begins, although he does not dwell on it too much; yes he is stranded and yes it is going to be frustrating. And the Brigadier needs someone on hand who can advise on the unknown, even if the Doctor is going to try his patience a great deal.

The first time I came across this story was in print, a Target novelization with illustrations of all things, and I read it cover to cover one summer day at my grandmother's house by the lake. At the time I was still coming to the realization that there we big holes in the available material (although I had no idea exactly how big those holes were as far as missing episodes went) but I had seen the third Doctor on TV already so to get a glimpse of his debut story was a treat. I didn't know who Liz was though as she is only a single season companion and was not featured in the episodes I had seen on TV.  I had, however, read the novelization of The War Games and realized that this was indeed the next episode I needed to experience, but actually seeing the episode was something that had to wait until autumn of 1985 on a special WNED17 broadcast of a pretty bad print. I didn't care, though; this was new Doctor Who and I lapped it up eagerly. The same poor quality print was a VHS release which of course I bought and managed to enjoy, followed by a DVD release and then this wonderful blu-ray. To see Spearhead presented in such sharp detail is just like seeing it for the first time; the muddy film prints I had previously seen lost so much detail - I hadn't noticed how waxy the humanoid Autons' faces like Channing, Scobie and especially the creepy receptionist at the plastics factory were made up to be. The iconic moment in the serial, though, with the Autons coming to life in shop windows one morning and going on a killing rampage is perfect in such sharpness; I thought the relatively gloomier film and VHS release would have made that a bit more horrific but no.

The Auton massacre of the unsuspecting general public deserves extra special mention - this took the series into a new place with the acknowledgement that the children who started watching Doctor Who at the beginning were now 6 years older and could handle more. The Pertwee era is known for its monsters and an increase in on screen action and violence, with Pertwee himself being a far more physical Doctor than Hartnell or Troughton, and it starts here with the aforementioned shop dummy attack, and carries through with brazen gun battles between the Autons and the UNIT troops, with the UNIT bodycount rising faster than the Autons'. With the Doctor now pinned to Earth the monsters and threats would all be coming to him, making the world seem a scarier place.

So now we move ahead with the new TARDIS team... even if they do not have the TARDIS to use.

NEXT EPISODE: DOCTOR WHO AND THE SILURIANS

World Game

Contrary to what the Time Lords decreed at the end of the Doctor’s trial, the charges of interfering in other civilizations proved to be too great to let go lightly, and the Doctor’s execution is ordered. The Celestial Intervention Agency, a shadowy branch of Time Lord beaurocracy, sees the Doctor as a potential agent and offers him a lifeline: service to them in exchange for his life. As a convicted criminal he has no official standing and if their hand were ever detected in any interventions they could always deny sending him. The Doctor is wary but accepts, and is sent on a mission to Earth with a Time Lady named Serena as his assistant. The Agency has detected meddling in the timelines around the Napoleonic Wars, and the Doctor must stop it, but he has to defeat an omnipotent group simply known as the Players to do so.

There really is nothing more potentially disastrous than retconning established lore in Doctor Who; it’s one thing to try and tie up a perceived loose end or maybe seize on a trivial aspect in the background and give it a backstory, but to try to overwrite something and insert more detail requires skill and discipline. Author Terrance Dicks doesn’t have as much of both as he would like us to think with his work in World Game.

There’s a widespread belief, made canon by BBC Licensing, that since there is no real visual record of Patrick Troughton regenerating into a new Doctor then he may well have been used as an agent by his own people for some time before he did indeed regenerate. The first inklings of this were in licensed (and therefore actually canon) Doctor Who comics published between the finale of The War Games and the new season premiere Spearhead From Space six months later, wherein the Doctor did do the dirty work of the Time Lords while on Earth and then did eventually regenerate into a new form in time to emerge from the TARDIS in a new season. There’s further proof to support the theory in future episodes such as The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors where the second Doctor meets his future selves at the behest of the Time Lords themselves; obviously he could have no contact with his own people prior to The War Games so logically this all is afterwards when he should have been sent into exile. It just stands to reason he did not go directly to Earth.

Terrance Dicks was script editor for the series at the time and had embraced this whole “season 6b” notion in World Game although it at times feels a bit too thin of a tale with action sequences lacking a lot of detail and characters such as the villainous Countess feeling two dimensional at best. I feel it’s an ambitious task to try and create the narrative for this hidden section of the Doctor’s past and although as an elder statesman of the series Dicks wants to do it and feels he should, his narrative skills are really not the best for the task. A co-writing credit with someone like Simon Messingham could have done just as well with the tale really going into some dark places of Time Lord secrets, and the Doctor trying harder to escape from this dirty work. I don’t mean to diss Dicks and his contribution to Doctor Who as a whole but his strength is not in writing prose, it’s in translating script to screen. He even takes the opportunity to set up an explanation for the second Doctor’s presence in The Two Doctors but it feels almost a bit too rushed like he thought of it at the end and stapled it onto the manuscript. In fact there are a few too many times where things feel like they were hurriedly put into the story instead of developed properly. Case in point: the Doctor's one-off companion for this one, a Time Lady named Serena who finds herself quickly buying into the allure of freedom from Time Lord society, probably because the Doctor keeps taking her to cafes and parties and eating a lot. See - not exactly credible.

And it’s not like this is the only time this sort of thing ever happens; with a time travel series the temptation is just too great to go back and tweak or replay or simply overwrite – one only has to look at how the time travel rewrite cop-outs have reduced the current series of the show to drivel where proper writing was obviously too difficult to master. There was even an ambitious fan made video tacked onto the DVD release of The War Games entitled Devious following the adventures of a halfway Doctor – Doctor 2.5 in effect – midway through his regeneration where he is visited by his future self. In many ways it is actually done better than most of what hit the screens from 2011 onwards.

 

So with Jamie and Zoe still flashing back to their time with the Doctor, their friend is still adventuring in time and space, albeit on a bit of a leash until the day comes for him to regenerate.

Which is now.

NEXT EPISODE: SPEARHEAD FROM SPACE

Second Chances

Zoe is still at the mercy of the Company. After Jen's failure to get what is needed from Zoe's memory, Ali returns, although her name is actually Kym, and she is more determined that before. She is aided by the fact that one of Zoe's past adventures on another space station similar to the Wheel is actually taking place *now* in this timeline, and she literally takes Zoe back into the past to get her to tell her what she wants. Zoe still does not remember her past fully, but now she is about to relive it and come face to face with the Doctor, Jamie... and herself.

So it turns out Zoe's story did not end with The Uncertainty Principle after all, which is good news for the Zoe fans out there. And it's a fun one now with her getting to see the Doctor and Jamie again and realize that yes, she did travel in time, yes her memory is blocked, and she has no idea why she would have willingly left that life behind at all. But all of this tinkering with her head is taking its toll; Zoe's retention is starting to wane now and she doesn't immediately remember Ali from the first time the Company attempted to coerce her into remembering her past. Previously I had expected Zoe to sink into depression or madness from this constant probing - previously the attempts to induce memory recall resulted in actual pain - but now it's actually starting to damage her.

The ruse of going back, sort of, to her past is an effective and credible one; Zoe is after all from the future so she could possibly exist twice over at some points as she travels with the Doctor. The same can be said of all the companions although it is not explored enough I find. Not that we need that to happen for everyone; there's the odd comment here and there in the series by contemporary companions that they haven't been born yet and there's a muse now and again about wondering what their current self is up to while they are battling great evils. But here is a chance for the Company to get something they want with minimal effort on the mind probing and, effectively, the torture. Because this is what it must be for Zoe: pure torture, inflicted on her by the Company but also indirectly, by the Time Lords for rendering her this vulnerable. I'd like to see at some point a future Doctor realize this and do something about it. Maybe one day it might happen.

But this is it now. The last Companion Chronicle to follow on from The War Games. Jamie is safe in his own time, and Zoe by the end of this one is... well, is she safe? Or is she still in danger. Time is going to tell on that one when we get more from Big Finish; it's safe to say that Zoe's after-TARDIS life has been the one with the most structured approach in it's telling, so it would be a shame to not invest in it further.

But in all of these adventures for the companions, what has become of the Doctor? He's been torn away from his friends and judged by his own people as a renegade and a liability. Last anyone saw him he was spinning away off into the void under threat of an induced regeneration - but is that really what happened to him...?

NEXT EPISODE: WORLD GAME

The Dying Light

The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe to what looks like a perfect place, and to an extent it is: they are on a perfectly balanced planet where the people live contentedly. The arrival of the TARDIS, unfortunately, has thrown the balance off and the perfect balance begins to decay. Leaving would be an option but the Doctor encounters an old acquaintance: Quadrigger Stoyn has been here for millennia waiting for the Doctor to return. This perfect place, it turns out, is a trap.

This one was released as part of Big Finish's 50th anniversary celebration back in (did I just say "back in"?) 2013 and it follows along from the adventure The Beginning where the Doctor and Susan first leave the society of the Time Lords, and then Stoyn is left behind by them as they continue their travels. Unlike the Doctor, though, Stoyn does not want to see the universe, he wants to go home. He is desperate to do so. And he's not a fool either; being a fellow Time Lord he has enough intelligence to know how to snare a TARDIS and has plans for it once he does get it. If he gets it. He's not to the demented madman place yet, but his anger at being left by the Doctor is there and it's only growing the longer he is kept from going home. Veteran actor Terry Molloy is Stoyn once again, doing a fantastic job as an unwilling renegade Time Lord; he's effectively a "baddie" as he is opposed to the Doctor's ways, but he's not to the degree of other Time Lords like the Monk. He drops the odd reference to the Time Lords without naming them directly, but he tells Jamie that they are gods and the Doctor had defied them and would have to pay.

This is also another of the Companion Chronicles without that future perspective from Jamie and Zoe, so it doesn't need to be left off until after they have departed the series and can be plunked somewhere else, maybe between a couple of the BBC Books novels if for nothing more than to give anyone a break between media should they choose to follow the continuity I am drawing up. There are no obvious hints about where this is taking place within season six; Stoyn knows that Jamie and Zoe have seen certain things with the Doctor and have been to certain places so it's not unrealistic to place it closer to the end of the season, although the more expanded universe material that comes out the longer that season becomes (it has gone from seven televised stories to thirty five stories across video, audio and printed prose).

And now there is just one more Companion Chronicle left in the range (to date, that is)...

NEXT EPISODE: SECOND CHANCES

The Apocalypse Mirror

The TARDIS makes an accidental landing in a city is a state of terror; the people rarely go outside and when they do they are attacked by fearsome metal bird-like creatures and then vanish. The leaders of the city are incapable of making any decisions about how to deal with any crisis - including the imminent impact of a meteorite which will wipe out everything when it strikes. And on top of this, the odd time someone can see another city overlain on this one, a better one where it is bright and clean and more pleasant than this cold dingy one. If only they could get there.

Well this is different. It's not a very complicated tale for starters; there's a mystery afoot and the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are as usual suspected of having something to do with it until they start to persuade the powers that be that they are there to help; it's pretty standard "base under siege" formula for the Troughton era. Fraser Hines does most of the work here providing voices for the entire cast save for Wendy Padbury in a supporting role as Zoe again.

As far as continuity goes here, though, The Apocalypse Mirror could really be dropped anywhere in season 6 after The Isos Network; there's no preamble set it in Zoe's future along with the previous three stories nor in Jamie's post War Games amnesiac life, it's just the TARDIS crew on an adventure. Jamie speaks in past tense but there are not enough clues to really place it anywhere specific. And without the framework of retrospection, to me a Companion Chronicle adventure doesn't really seem to be doing what they should: telling the story from the companion's point of view but from some time after the events. What we have here is really just a simple short tale with a bit of a cut down cast, not something that is being looked back on in horror or joy from the future. With Jamie and Zoe, though, it's not like there are a lot of ways to keep them telling stories; as I said before the device of sudden recall for Jamie will only work so many times, and with Zoe the interrogation of the Company is probably going to drive her mad or kill her. There's far more potential for Zoe to tell these stories within her future framework, but maybe as a boxed set of a few together linked by her escape from the Company, maybe desperate to reconnect with the Doctor once everything comes back to her.

Of course Big Finish can do what they want, and they show good judgement in almost everything they do produce, keeping within their limits as defined by the BBC's license but also being mindful of the universe they themselves have created in the nooks and crannies of the established series. My grumbles about continuity are my own; I would have preferred to have known this was not being told from the future perspective so I could have slid it in between The Final Sanction or The Colony of Lies. That said I have but two more to go before I am moving onto the next Doctor's era, so we shall see where they should be placed.

NEXT EPISODE: THE DYING LIGHT

The Uncertainty Principle

Still held by the Company, Zoe is still insistent that she does not remember any travels with the Doctor and Jamie in the TARDIS. Her interrogator, Jen, insists they keep pushing as they have managed to punch a hole through whatever is blocking Zoe's memories, and she prods Zoe for more. Zoe remembers a funeral for a scientist - a girl named Meg, someone they never met - but with the Doctor and Jamie she befriends Meg's friend Archie to find out what Meg was working on which caused her death. There's more to it than just an experiment gone wrong, and the Doctor wants to find out and stop it.

Big Finish's decision to give Zoe this kind of extended afterlife from her companion days is playing out brilliantly; third tale in a row now with her trying to live a normal life with the adventures in the TARDIS behind her and the memories out of her reach. Companion Chronicles, in my view, function best when they are told in hindsight once the party is over and they are left to deal with their new lives. Some have been simple flashbacks, but this sort of thing I feel is the best. This one feels like the last of them in this plot thread, so I can rate it as good, but the after-TARDIS adventures of Ian Chesterton feel a bit more compelling. But maybe just because there are more of them.

A new dimension here though is Zoe having a potential love interest in Archie. Jen chides her about not being loveable or loved as a means to get her to talk and almost mocks her interest in Archie as something she could never see through, but Zoe isn't used to thinking or feeling that way and it means little to her to be mocked for it. All through the TV series there was not any idea Zoe might be interested in any of the men she met, it was only when The Indestructible Man was written that it was ever really explored and even then Zoe just accepted it as a logical thing that she might end up coupled with someone, even if that time it was out of convenience. And it's not to say that Zoe is asexual, the idea of romantic interest and emotions just honestly never occurred to her. Interestingly the one person she does feel attraction to here, Archie, is not a confident sort - hardly the type one would think she would notice. And Archie is not without his own baggage - he was interested in Meg until she died. But he thinks he can still hear her talking to him down a mock up single string telephone line they built.

Ohyes in amongst all the Zoe material is the actual mystery around Meg's death and what she was up to that caused it. That scary monster on the cover should give a clue; there are aliens behind the scenes but their motivation is unclear as they are not always there. They only appear in relation to Meg's experiment, which arouses the Doctor's suspicions. There's a good dose of hard science in here right from the principles of what Meg was trying to achieve right through to Zoe's own rationale about science being about inconsistency and the never ending search for more answers.

As the story rolls on though Zoe's life is said to hang in the balance. If she gives the Company the memories they want, will she go free? Another Companion Chronicle will no doubt reveal that.

NEXT EPISODE: THE APOCALYPSE MIRROR

The Memory Cheats

The Company have detained Zoe Herriot; they have identified her as a traveller in time and they want her secrets for themselves. Where their previous agent, Ali, has failed they have dispatched another, named Jen to succeed. Zoe is outraged and confused - she knows she never travelled anywhere with the Doctor or Jamie McCrimmon, but here she is again with everyone insisting that her perfect memory is in fact flawed and she has forgotten everything. But the odd scraps of memory and the vivid dreams of being in the TARDIS remain, and with Jen Zoe begins to recount a tale of when she, along with the Doctor and Jamie, landed on Earth in 1919 and faced a monster.

Another historical tale, which the early years were famous for, although not as many in the Troughton era stayed firmly with history and left the science fiction element behind. The Memory Cheats, though, does go to science fiction land with the presence of a monster stealing children and terrorizing a village in Uzbekistan shortly after the Bolsheviks took power. The Doctor assumes the guise of a medical examiner from Moscow, there to look into these disappearances - his usual ruse in situations like this.

Like Echoes of Grey we're getting two stories again, but my interest is more with the tale of Zoe now, after she has been torn from the TARDIS and her memories stolen from her. And the Company as well - who are these people? What do they want with Zoe's memories exactly, and how long are they going to keep hounding her? And really how much of this can Zoe be expected to take? I had mentioned before that Zoe seemed to be tipping towards the edge of depression, but now her resolve seems to be building and she is hardening against the Company and its intrusion into her life. It's worth remembering that although she's been away from the Doctor for a while and can't even remember him, Zoe is still a lot smarter than the people looking to cash in on her memories, and that can be dangerous.

Dig that title though eh? The Memory Cheats. This is something a former producer of Doctor Who used to say when old lost episodes were remembered by people who saw it the one time on television, and through their remembering they are making the memory itself better, ignoring defects and inconsistencies and really upping the nostalgia tour. The notion is not misplaced as I remember speaking to some of those fans or reading their testimonies about older episodes which at the time were lost and my they were the best things on TV ever. And then some of those episodes started to turn up and although they were not absolute crap they were still on-par with the rest of the episodes we had; they were kinda normal, the memory filling in blanks to really make them seem like a lost treasure (and to an extent they are - don't think I am suggesting otherwise). And perhaps that is how the Company looks at Zoe's fleeting elusive memories. But be warned; if the memory itself can cheat, maybe Zoe can, too.

NEXT EPISODE: THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE

Echoes of Grey

Years after she has seen a counselor for her bad dreams, Zoe finds herself face to face with a woman named Ali who she does not know, but who says she knows her. Ali insists that she and Zoe met not too long ago in the company of the Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon. Zoe is confused; she knows that she has a perfect memory but it does not include any adventures with the two time travellers, yet her vivid dreams tell her otherwise. Ali offers to help Zoe uncover some of her lost memories, in particular the ones where she is present, centering on events which took place at an advanced medical research centre. Zoe allows Ali to help her, and the memories of the horrors she faced there begin to return.

Echoes of Grey seems to get panned by a lot of critics as one of Big Finish's least ambitious tales, with complaints being mostly about what some feel is a sub-par performance by Wendy Padbury as the biggest issue. And in some ways maybe this is true; she is not tremendously animated as she speaks of the events she witnessed, but Zoe is supposed to be under some kind of influence as she recalls things, almost a trance, which would account for why her delivery is a bit stiff and unenthusiastic. The other reason for it, though, may be something that Big Finish were working on behind the scenes without feeling the need to spell it all out for listeners: Zoe is probably slipping into depression. Her life before the Doctor and Jamie was fulfilling enough for her at the time with logical puzzles to solve and work to do every day, but as she has returned to it and is now older, the daily joyless grind has just switched off any enthusiasm she might have had. She says herself that she lives alone and has no friends, she just does her job and knows she is good at it given that she if gifted with total recall. Imagine what these blank bits in her memory and the bad dreams can do to the confidence of a person like that.

As for the meat of the episode we are told a tale of genetic engineering and a species bred to draw out infection and disease and cure patients of all their worldly ills. Not a bad leap really, although having a race about packed full of distilled disease doesn't sound like the best solution; we're talking walking biohazards, living waste receptacles. The ethics of creating a species just to lumber them with sicknesses and let others live longer is a minor concern to the people who created them, these Achromatics - after all the bigger picture is all the lives which are being saved, not the few lives which have been created just to act as vessels. We've come across this in a lot of other science fiction and fantasy, most notably the Clones in The Clone Wars of the Star Wars franchise; if you've created a life form, don't you get to determine it's fate?

Echoes is actually the start of a Zoe trilogy, much like the three tales of Oliver Harper and the last few adventures of Steven Taylor; Zoe has attracted the attention of the Company, and her interaction with Ali is really just their first stab and getting into her head and at her memories. I enjoy this sort of an approach, with a bit of a theme to pull the adventures together - especially where Jamie and Zoe are concerned as there can only be so much convenient recall before the device gets tired.

But I don't think this approach will.

NEXT EPISODE: THE MEMORY CHEATS

The Glorious Revolution

James Robert McCrimmon receives a visitor from the stars while on the moors. The visitor - man who calls himself a Time Lord - insists that Jamie travelled through time and space with a man known as the Doctor, and while Jamie remembers the Doctor he is sure that he never travelled with him. Sure, that is, until the strange visitor restores his memories, and it all comes flooding back: Victoria, Zoe, the TARDIS, the Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors... and a time when the TARDIS came to land on Earth in 1688. Jamie found himself wandering in his own past, and the crew were received into the court of King James II. But the visitor insists that something went wrong in that time, and soon they realize that Jamie himself was the cause of a massive disruption to the timelines.

First deal here is there's is an assertion that this is the first time Jamie went into his own past, conveniently forgetting The Roundheads, published some eight years earlier. Still, Roundheads in 1648, almost one hundred years before Jamie's time and one could argue that The Glorious Revolution is more legitimately Jamie's past as it is closer to his time and he knows who the historical players are. Not only that, but Jamie  has a more direct connection with these events as they shape his own life and when he realizes that he has the opportunity to do something about it and make things better, he takes it.

Yes, it's now Jamie's turn to fall into the "you can't rewrite history" trap; he realizes that the revolution that is to come from James's abdication of the throne creates untold suffering in Ireland and Scotland and indeed leads to the Jacobite uprisings of his own time. The Doctor warns Jamie that interfering in this could create massive damage to the future, but Jamie's retort is they have always fought against evil and rhymes off the list of baddies they have seen off, and in his mind this is no different. As far as he is concerned, the Doctor is wrong, and he is right - after all, it's his planet and his history.

Zoe gets pretty much hushed up for this one, getting trapped and locked up with the Doctor a great deal and not getting much to do at all. Her own logic tells her that the Doctor is right, leading Jamie to turn his back on her as well, although he does save them both from a hangman's noose despite the difference of opinion. The Doctor comes to life a bit more this time with even more of his dialogue performed uncannily by Fraser Hines, which ultimately leads to him playing the Doctor full on.

With this as the second time Jamie's memory has been restored one has to wonder how many more times this formula is going to seem entertaining or enjoyable; with Zoe there is the potential for a story arc to build but unless Jamie is going to keep his memories for good the whole concept of forgetting and sudden restoration is going to get tired eventually.

But for now, back to Zoe's future...

NEXT EPISODE: ECHOES OF GREY

Helicon Prime

Jamie McCrimmon has awakened in hospital, his head smoking from being struck by lightning out on the moors. The jolt has done something to him - he has remembered something that had been blotted out for the longest time: he has remembered the Doctor. He starts to tell the nurse about the time he and the Doctor visited Helicon Prime, which was a posh luxury vacation spot situated in a region of space where anger and hostility were nonexistant thanks to the effects of the Golden Zone, an energy field which reduces the urge to do harm to virtually nothing. But then the murders start, proof that the effect is fading, and someone has a plan to take advantage of it.

Unlike Zoe's emerging recall in Fear of the Daleks, Jamie needs a good jolt of lightning to snap his synapses back into place, even if it may just be a temporary effect. He doesn't remember leaving the Doctor, though; he doesn't recount their separation at the end of The War Games in his narrative but he describes it all as dream that fades as one wakes up in the morning. And fade it does as the tale works its way to the finale, with Jamie starting to lose his train of thought as the memories start to slip away. Again a difference from Zoe; whereas she is going to keep remembering things, Jamie is experiencing a rarity and potentially he won't be haunted by bad dreams.

Continuity gets a bit off here though; Jamie states that he and the Doctor arrive at Helicon Prime en route to picking Victoria up from her study of graphology (a handy means to have the narrative limited to two regulars and not neglect a third) but up til now there has been no mention of her being absent from the TARDIS crew in the televised episodes, let alone the Doctor being able to pilot the ship with that kind of accuracy. Previously, though, there was mention in The Black Hole of the Doctor and Jamie going off on a mission together and leaving Victoria behind to do just that, and that was a device to allow the Doctor and Jamie to meet a future Doctor in The Two Doctors (in 1985 - so a ways off right now). Helicon Prime suggests that the Doctor and Jamie might well have had several adventures without Victoria, which would be relatively easy for Big Finish to realize with Fraser Hines being able to do both voices. This is the first Companion Chronicle with Hines doing the work and although he has not started his Troughton impressions in earnest there are parts where while doing the dialogue I could hear it starting to happen.

There is a proper theory about this whole graphology business which was put out there but it's yet to be discussed. But I'm coming up to a big chunk of it shortly. Before then, though, Jamie and Zoe have a few more adventures in their Doctor-less futures,

NEXT EPISODE: THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION

Fear of the Daleks

Zoe Herriot is having bad dreams. Very vivid bad dreams. She wakes up at night tormented by very clear images of monsters and feelings of absolute terror; with her eidetic memory this is worse than a normal nightmare. She seeks the help of a counselor and tells of her dream, a dream where she is with two men she met just once on the Wheel: Jamie McCrimmon and the Doctor. How she can dream of them so vividly is a mystery to her and she suspects her memory is being blocked, for how else could she recall with such clarity a time when she was with the Doctor and Jamie and they encountered the most evil creatures in the universe - the Daleks.

It's curious that in this instance the Daleks are trying to be all subtle in their plans; they are attempting to use third parties as assassins to disrupt a peace conference and set the parties at war, but this kind of cunning is not really them at all. I was surprised that the Daleks were not just going to roll in and wipe everyone out. Zoe is absolutely terrified of them, with her dream detailing watching them on a screen in the TARDIS and then falling into their trap; her eidetic memory makes her a perfect candidate for the assassination mission they have in mind. Zoe is then used against her will as their puppet to attempt to carry out their plans.

There are really two stories being told here; the first and most obvious is the adventure with the Daleks, but the other is the start of a loose story arc. Zoe's memory being so sharp has somehow resisted some of the Time Lord voodoo they used to wipe it of her time with the Doctor, and over the years bits of what happened while she was on board the TARDIS is percolating through the layers. Being a logical type of gal, Zoe makes the conclusion that she is actually being blocked somehow and slowly realizes that she actually has been with the Doctor and Jamie, even if she can't remember everything in any coherent order or detail. Did the Time Lords get the whole mind wipe wrong? Did they understand so little about humans that the whole thing was just a big fail?

And if Zoe's memories are still lurking somewhere in her subconscious, bubbling up in her dreams, then what about Jamie...?

NEXT EPISODE: HELICON PRIME