The Curse of Peladon

The Doctor appears to have gotten the TARDIS working again, and while on a short jaunt with Jo finds the ship has taken them to the planet of Peladon in the far future. Peladon has applied for admission to the Galactic Federation, and a committee of assessment have gathered there to decide if the planet may indeed join the union; the matter is a polarizing one on Peladon as there is fear that the Federation will rob the planet of its rights. The Doctor and Jo are mistaken for delegates and are swept along with the tide of events; the delegates are being targeted by an unseen enemy which is hailed as a spiritual attack by the ghost of the royal beast, Aggedor. The Doctor is not convinced but in the course of his investigations is charged with sacrilege, and must submit to a trial by combat.

What I like about Curse is that despite the Doctor being grounded in exile on Earth, he is managing to get away a bit even if the last time it was at the convenience of the Time Lords. It's somewhere new, somewhere without UNIT around as the series is in a bit of danger of just being a UNIT series guest starring the Doctor.

The other thing I really like about this one is the inclusion of the Ice Warriors. Yup the big greens are back but this time they are not the baddies - they are decent respectable honourable members of the Federation. A lot has changed on Mars it seems, although the Doctor does not immediately believe it given how things have gone before. The dedication that the Martian Lord Izlyr shows, however, to justice and Federation law is an indicator that the Martians are far more noble than their invading conquering ways might suggest. But they are not the only aliens in this committee - making their debut are the multilimbed Alpha Centauri which looks like an upright centipede with one really big eye, and the mobility challenged Arcturus. The people of Peladon are not only going to be asked to swallow membership in the Federation but also friendship with some pretty extreme looking creatures. Jo hardly reacts to them now - she's come a long way.

The Pels themselves are a bit different. they are humanoid but with distinct grey and red hairstyles. It appears to be a very male-dominated world right down to the Greek-like soldiers who guard the King and his... um... well it looked kinda like he was wearing a short skirt and stockings really. Jo was dressed better in a floor length dress for the first time ever on the show.

Holy man of action, Doctor, one on one cage match against the King's champion! The first Doctor once made reference to indulging in fisticuffs but this Doctor is all about the fighting when pushed. We've seen it a few times with a skillfil "HAI!" and down goes an opponent but so far not a full on fight.

But while the Doctor and Jo are off saving a world from barbarism, the Brigadier is having a crisis himself on Earth. Ever wondered who the Brig would ask for help if the Doctor were gone?

NEXT EPISODE: THE FACE OF THE ENEMY

Day of the Daleks

Earth is once more teetering on the edge of war. Peace talks have failed and troops are massing on borders between rival nations. UNIT is on full alert, the Brigadier's orders are to liaise with local military should an emergency arise. The key figure to the success of peace talks is Sir Reginald Styles, another puffed up civil servant but one who is trusted by all the involved nations. Only problem there is that someone is trying to kill him; a man in combat fatigues appears out of nowhere but vanishes again like a ghost before he can follow through. The Doctor is intrigued, and upon investigation discovers a desperate group of resistance fighters from the future where the Daleks have taken over the Earth following a dreadful war. The resistance believe that killing Styles will avert the war to come and prevent a Dalek invasion - but are they right?

Chaos theory is the device being used to power this one through; the notion that the future and the past can interact and influence each other. It's a horrible cliche in my books - no matter how clever a writer thinks they are being it just leaves me wishing they had been smart enough to not use the worst science fiction cop-out as the driver behind a story. Example being: tomorrow I gain access to time travel, so I use it to go back to 2011 and stop myself from selling my Star Wars collection before I move house to Nova Scotia. So I succeed and I move out here with all my Kenner toys and eventually I come to present day, the day I departed for the past. Only this time I have no motivation to go back in time because I have all my toys in my house. So I never go back in time, thus I never convince myself not to sell the collection, I move here without it and then when I get the chance to correct things I take it. And I get caught in a loop. This is, generally speaking, how chaos theory works. It was employed in The Terminator with a character from the future sending a man into the past who would become his father and no-one really processed it much because it was Arnold Schwarzenegger shooting things so why ask questions. And it was used far too much as a cop out ending to too many Doctor Who episodes from 2010 to present day, which was part of why I fell out of love with the new series after a while.

But here we are doing it back in 1971, and this time there are Daleks. And beasts called Orgrons. And UNIT. Ah the good old days. The Master is behind bars so UNIT can get back to saving the world from itself - whatever peace initiatives were made in the conference in The Mind of Evil have not worked and war is looming. The Doctor remains aloof about the whole thing, commenting on how silly humans are to allow themselves to get this close to annihilation when they could be doing so many other things; he's got the TARDIS to fix, the console outside the machine once more although he's using the same lab from Ambassadors of Death.

Did it need to be a Dalek story though? The production team freely admit that the Daleks were added to the mix very late in the game, so it's no wonder their presence isn't as effective as it has been in the past. But they had not been seen for five years by now, and they are in colour for the first time so of course make one of them gold to show that off. But any alien race could have done what they have done here - it lacks the guile the Daleks should have and just makes them seem opportunistic. And if it's not bad enough that Day is tinkering with sloppy time travel theories, the paradox that is created here actually over-writes The Dalek Invasion of Earth, which would mean the Daleks in 2164 would have had a far greater foothold and perhaps there would not have been a victory there, and Susan would not have been left behind by the first Doctor. And at one point the gold Dalek (is this the new Dalek Supreme? we never really know) tells the Doctor "We have invaded Earth again,"... again?  Does this mean the Daleks are aware of an invasion which never happened now? Still some slack has to be cut for the production team at the time; having gotten the rights to the Daleks back they would have been eager to use them again. These days the new program trots them out every season without fail and has made them a little less menacing than they used to be since they can be seen off on a regular basis. These ones once they get going do overpower and mow over the UNIT forces and really could have easily conquered the Earth if they had shown up in 1972 instead.

Day of the Daleks is one of the few titles to have been released in almost every format available; it has seen numerous reprints as a Target novel and it has been released on Beta, VHS, laserdisc and ultimately on DVD with a special edition added. There is not a fan out there who will stand up and say they liked the Dalek voices from the original broadcast - they were just wrong. Totally wrong. How the director went into this not knowing how a Dalek was supposed to sound boggles the mind. But with the special edition DVD the voices are overdubbed by the current voice of the Daleks, Nicholas Briggs, and the entire special effects package is lovingly re-done to give the serial a lot more gloss. They were careful to not go too far with it and make it too up-to-date but I was pleased to see that as with the enhanced version of The Dalek Invasion of Earth the same Dalek saucer ships were used as are used in current episodes. But you can pretty it up as much as you like, I will still maintain that the whole concept of the script and its resolution are ultimately flawed. Still... Daleks.

NEXT EPISODE: THE CURSE OF PELADON

Harvest of Time and Gardeners' Worlds

Earth is under attack again. The skies are opening up and dropping water from other worlds into the oceans, and in other places the seas are being swallowed in great swaths - all of this heralds the arrival of an army of glass crabs called the Sild. Their mission is to locate the Master. Under lock and key at a high security prison, the Master couldn't be safer, but he is becoming unpicked in time, and everyone is forgetting who he is save the Doctor and Jo. And at the centre of the whole affair is a massive spaceship called The Consolidator, presumed destroyed in the far future and all its contents gone with it - contents that the Doctor and the Master know of and both realize could be of deadly consequence to them and time itself.

This is what happens when a science fiction writer gets his hands on Doctor Who: you get something brilliant. It's a bit of a style evolution here for what would be called a "past Doctor adventure" or PDA had the BBC Books novels continued on their course; when the BBC took the novels back from Virgin Publishing the general view was that quality suffered given that the tone of the novels was a bit childish and simple with the odd breakthrough novel like The Indestructible Man or Combat Rock. When the line sort of returned with The Wheel of Ice there was a newer harder science fiction edge to the books, and here Harvest of Time is no exception. It's set during the UNIT era with the Master still in prison after being captured at the end of The Daemons so the continuity of that plot detail is maintained, as is the Doctor's exile to Earth and the current UNIT team roster. And while the narrative detail of the story is far more complicated and rich than a Terrance Dicks Target novelization there is never really a sense of a disconnect from the stories around it; the characters are all spot on and believable and can be recognized for who they are.

Things are kept interesting by splitting the story a few different ways; the usual formula of the Doctor and companion - this time Jo Grant - being separated is eventually employed but a lot of the action takes place on an oil rig in the North Sea with the beleaguered Edwina McCrimmon (no relation to Jamie) trying to make sense of the breakdowns across the rigs her family business runs and eventually fighting for her life against the invading Slid. Edwina's - Eddie like on Ab Fab - development is not just for the sake of some dead end or semi-companion character; this all does go somewhere eventually and it's all pretty clever, although a bit obvious eventually.

I read the paperback of the story when it first came out some years ago but this time decided I could get through it a bit quicker if someone read it to me while I did the dishes and petted my cat so I grabbed the audio version read by Geoffrey Beevers. Beevers played the Master on screen once in 1980 and has since become the regular voice of the Master for Big Finish audios, and he does a rock solid job evoking Jon Pertwee's third Doctor on audio but I felt like sometimes he was projecting a bit of his own Master onto the Delgado version which is featured here. Roger Delgado's Master was the model for them all to follow - dignified, self assured and thoroughly malevolent; Anthony Ainley would keep that alive in his time and then when the character returned to screens in the new series he was more manic and zany, and then was eventually a shallow mad and zany female character. The future versions of the Master actually get some page time here, including a mention of a female version years ahead of it actually happening on screen.  

Its a shame that we can't get more novels like this especially in the classic eras; it's one thing to latch onto the current on screen version and be all topical for a few minutes but it's something quite different to return to the classic eras and see things a bit differently and add to the older narratives. Big Finish manage this quite well on audio but there's nothing quite like a long story told well either on page on on audio.

Speaking of...

GARDENERS' WORLDS

A news story about strange goings on in a small village attracts the attention of the Doctor, Jo and Captain Yates. At first the Doctor is not interested - small beans for him - until they go and see and find the village gradually being overrun by strange plants. Alien plants. Contact with them has a profound effect on whoever gets close. But this isn't just a case of weeds to be pulled - these are far more dangerous and could cause the end of the world if left to their own devices.

First thing I want to say is how drab Big Finish makes the covers for these Short Trips. Well, made them for a while, I've seen some newer ones out there and they have put a bit more effort into them, but there are only so many portrait style pictures you can use before the covers start to look dull.

The contents are rarely dull, though, and Gardeners' World moves along at a good pace telling a slightly creepy tale of invading plants from outer space. Of course alien plants are a fun scifi go-to ever since Day of the Triffids and Doctor Who goes there a few times but this one is not as vast and sprawling of an epic of invasion as would have been fun. Gardeners' Worlds is just like short trips - small, over in a relatively short time (it would actually be the length of a TV episode) and is just fun. This was my first time hearing Tim Trealor as the Third Doctor and I was well impressed to hear him, I'm looking forward to some full on adventures with him as the Doctor paired with Katy Manning as Jo Grant.

But now back to the TV. And some old enemies making a long overdue return.

NEXT EPISODE: DAY OF THE DALEKS

Who Killed Kennedy

Newspaperman turned investigative journalist James Stevens has been covering the news in the UK for a while now but he has started spotting something odd. There have been some strange goings on around London, starting with a tip off about a man who doesn't have human blood, to a strange deadly plague outbreak, a crisis at the space centre and a cover up at a government funded experimental drilling installation. Through it all Stevens had noticed the presence of a covert paramilitary organization called UNIT - a presence no-one will confirm but will repeatedly warn him away from. In his quest to blow the whole affair wide open and expose what he thinks is the cover-up of a lifetime Stevens begins to notice another common link to events: where there is UNIT, there is usually an operative known as "the Doctor"...

When this was first published in 1996 I was not immediately interested in it. I can't remember exactly what it was that turned me off but it may just have been the fact that it was a first person account of something not exactly a Doctor Who story - one of the first Doctor-lite tales out there but I gave it a miss anyway and carried on with the other novels which were on offer. Paul McGann had just appeared on TV as the Doctor and word was the whole Virgin Publishing line was about to end so as far as this appeared it was not even a Doctor Who novel. I walked past it a few times at Coles and never thought much about it until a couple years ago when I got a copy from eBay for $7.

Who Killed Kennedy is what I can only describe as a continuity bomb, although some might say it's just a big old fan wank. I will just say it was an ambitious idea to have someone outside the action spotting what was going on and trying to make sense of it as he follows the first two years of the Earthbound adventures of the Doctor. The question is always asked why no-one notices any of these alien invasions and how they can possibly be covered up; in a future adventure companion Ace will ask the very same question about a Dalek incursion in 1963 - Stevens knows something is going on but the truth is well hidden from the public, buried under D-notices and in some cases intimidation by thugs. Stevens does, actually, get the truth when he goes digging for it but ironically dismisses a lot of the alien invasion stories as nonsense as he believes that UNIT are some sinister force with their own world dominating agenda. Objectivity right out the window there.

The cameos come fast and furious as the pages turn, most of them coming from the stories of the first two Pertwee series including Greg Sutton and Petra Williams from Inferno, the Brigadier, Liz Shaw and even the Doctor himself. And there are some clever moments where Stevens is worked into the background of some sequences from television, including The Mind of Evil so note to self to go back to that one and actually see him.Of course it's fun to see Liz back but there is still one more past companion who gets a comeback which is far more interesting: Dodo.

The last time we saw Dodo was when the Doctor was putting her under to counteract the influence of the supercomputer WOTAN in The War Machines and then she just never came back, having decided off screen to stay in London. The abruptness of her departure irked the Doctor and seemed unrealistic at the time (as did her sudden joining of the TARDIS crew) but the retconners of the expanded universe had since revisited Dodo in Salvation, Bunker Soldiers and The Man in the Velvet Mask to redraw her as a confused, scared and tremendously insecure girl who was always putting on a facade for everyone due to her upbringing by her Aunt. That facade turned out to not be enough to shield her from the horrors she witnessed with the Doctor and when she was out of his sight she was slowly sinking into a depressed funk, so the chance to escape when it came was one she could ill afford to pass up. Flash forward to Who Killed Kennedy and Dodo is a broken woman suffering from PTSD, lonely and scared with no friends, no money and no real memories about her past except for flashes of monsters. The question I still have is whether she would have ended up this way after all or if this mental breakdown is due to WOTAN's influence or the Doctor's attempt to counter it, or maybe both.

And then came the moment I dreaded; the whole thing fell apart in a jumbled mess of predictability and science fiction cliche. You can see it coming, really, there is one line at the end of a chapter to just make you sigh "Oh no..." and then read on to another of "those" science fiction endings when it could have done so much more. The brightest side I can think of is that the ending of the story gives a better reason for the ninth Doctor to be present at the assassination of John F Kennedy than just some stunt to prove he can travel in time. I also discovered that I read it a bit too soon as well; this should be left until after Day of the Daleks to make it work right.

I wouldn't say this was a total lost opportunity for something great but really, it could have been so much more than a clever fan wank.

NEXT EPISODE: HARVEST OF TIME

The Daemons

An archaeological dig outside the small village of Devil's End promises to reveal a bronze age treasure trove, and it's all going to happen live on BBC3 for the whole country to see. A local White Witch believes that this dig will unleash supernatural chaos - literally Hell on Earth - and the Doctor agrees and rushes to stop it. He is too late and as a result he, along with Jo, Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton and the entire village is trapped inside a heat barrier, and with them is the Master and his gargoyle servant, Bok. The Master is not there by accident; the opening of the barrow has stirred up a being named Azal, the last of the Daemons, and the Master wants to inherit Azal's powers and rule over the Earth.

Life continues on Earth for the Doctor, and as there is no referencing the Master's exploits on Exarius it's probable that a bit of time has gone by since Colony in Space. The Doctor isn't obsessing over the state of the TARDIS for the first time in a while, this time he is working on his car, Bessie, perhaps making the most of what travel he can do. There's a sense of relaxation among the regulars in this one, like they have all developed into a proper team together like Jo hanging around the garage while the Doctor tinkers, Benton and Yates watching a football match together, the Brigadier off for the night in his mess uniform like a parent leaving the kids home alone for an evening. In the DVD extras the cast attribute this to the script being written by an insider - producer Barry Letts himself - but it just adds to the feeling that time has gone by on Earth for the Doctor, not just a few months so far. The UNIT family has grown a bit more as well, bringing Corporal Jenkins into the mix along with Sergeant Osgoode who was retconned in The Eye of the Giant but is now here in the role that spawned the buffoonish other Osgoode in the new series on TV.

This story has a marked difference from some of the others, being that it flirts with the notion of the occult and satanic rituals and lets itself get away with it only because there is a scientific explanation for it all. There's that old saying in literature about higher forms of science being indistinguishable from magic, and here it's really the m.o. of the story; black magic incantations and such serving as ways of whipping up and focusing specific psychic energy bursts to be harnessed like electricity. But the Master is the picture of a Satan worshiper (ornate red robes and some need to put Jo Grant in a white dress to offer her as sacrifice) and Azal himself is modeled after the Devil with horns and hooves and... sagging stockings... and... well, some pretty inconvenient extra body hair (if you're into that). And as for Bok, the stone gargoyle brought to life, he's a nasty little customer chasing people down and blowing them away with fireballs instead of this big giant menace that is Azal. The last of the Daemons is not a big raging monster but he's not of a good disposition either; humans are just another experiment to the Daemons after all - they gave knowledge to humanity over the centuries - but the experiment has not borne the fruit they had hoped. The choice is now clear: pass on the power of the Daemons to a custodian, or destroy the experiment.

This one has an interesting length as well: it's done over five episodes which has not been seen since The Mind Robber. In fact except for The Dominators there are no other five part stories anywhere in the series; in the Troughton era they are there back to back because one was under length and needed stuff added and the other was too long and was cut down from six, but The Daemons has no such story to go with it's length, it simply just ran five episodes in a twenty-five episode season. At least that's the story so far; someone might know something different. But this was the finale episode for the season as well and it was craftily done, even bringing the Master to justice and leaving the series regulars to literally dance their way into the credits (except for Yates and the Brig who went drinking).

The next season would bring the Master back, but before that there is, as always, a bit of expanded universe fun to be had...

NEXT EPISODE: WHO KILLED KENNEDY

Colony in Space

The Time Lords reactivate the TARDIS and send the Doctor along with Jo Grant to the planet Exarius in 2472. There they find a group of struggling colonists trying to make a go of the planet, but their efforts are being hampered by withering crops and sightings of giant monsters, and then a pair of colonists are killed. Exarius has a small population of primitives but they are not known to be violent unless provoked. Not knowing why he has been sent here the Doctor investigates and discovers that IMC have arrived on the planet as well, convinced that they have full rights to set up an operation to strip the planet of resources, and they are behind the monster sightings. An Adjudicator is contacted and asked to decide the fate of the planet, but when he arrives he is revealed to be the Master on his own mission to Exarius: to find an ancient doomsday weapon and use it for his own schemes.

So things have changed for the Doctor now; instead of being left in exile to stew he has now been put on a short leash to do Time Lord work for them. The Doctor is excited to be free of Earth and on another planet again but the realization that it was only allowed as a one-off by the Time Lords sours the whole experience for him; it will be back to work on the TARDIS again once this little jaunt is over. The Master loves it, though; it's humiliation enough to see the Doctor grounded but to be see him made into a patsy is even better. The Master himself seems able to come and go on the Time Lord's home planet as well, slipping in and stealing information and then running off with it to raise hell across the universe.

As far as other continuity goes here there's the interesting Interplanetary Mining Corporation, or IMC, which was referenced in The Wheel of Ice as having grown out of the Issigri Mining Corporation seen in The Space Pirates. It's not longer a mom and pop kind of organization now, though; it's grown into a vast capitalist machine with a tendency to strip planets bare and move on without the slightest bit of consequence to itself. The arrogance of the company itself can be seen in how its top men operate, with Captain Dent being tremendously matter-of-fact about things even though he is a muderer. It's not hard to sere that we're dealing with one of those moments where the script is making a social statement, this time about capitalism at the expense of the people.

What is that thing?

And this is Jo Grant's first time inside the TARDIS. When she does see what's inside the police box she is astonished and says that all the tales of time and space must be true... so was she just humouring the Doctor all this time? She saw the TARDIS materialize in front of her at the end of The Claws of Axos so it should have been a clue, but now here she is inside. The console room was seen in the previous story as well and it's a much smaller version of what it was in the Hartnell era. And less cluttered, save for a large.... metal.... barrel? And the walls have been altered as well, with one still an obvious photographic blow up. Maybe it's wallpaper. The console is the original but the column as in Axos has been switched up.

When it came to Target books publishing the story as a novel it benefited from having Malcolm Hulke write it himself; he's not the best novelist himself but his prose style adds a bit more description to it than his buddy Terrance Dicks. He certainly did add a bit more meat to the details though, in particular the colonists' accounts of Earth when they left it as being overcrowded and people with blue hair living there.  The title must have sounded too blase for the folks at Target, though, and like a few others it was changed into something more... interesting, more dynamic, more sensational... it became Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon. At the time it was published as well there was no indication that all the novels of the series would be published so the book has an intro for Jo Grant as if this is her first time meeting the Doctor instead of just her first time inside the TARDIS. There is also an intro to the Master worked in as Terror of the Autons had not been published as a novel yet, and a bit of a re-telling of the Doctor's adventures and trial.

Seeing as it's a one-off to go into space again, the Doctor is returned to Earth to keep trying to escape. The Master, however, is still out there doing what he wants. And he will be back.

NEXT EPISODE: THE DAEMONS

The Claws of Axos

Out of the darkness of space comes a strange object; it’s not a comet, it’s not a meteor, it’s almost a space ship but it has a name: it is called Axos. Axos is not a conventional space ship – it was grown and is a living thing and its power reserves have fallen dangerously low. Axos and the Axons who live inside have come to Earth to beg for help, to ask to let the ship replenish its energy reserves as it continues its journey. The Axons offer a gift, a substance called Axonite, which can solve all of Earth’s energy problems. The Doctor is not sure about this – something that sounds too good to be true usually is in the end. But as the governments of the planet scream for their share of the miracle that is Axonite, the Doctor discovers two terrible secrets: the true nature of Axos, and the Master travelling with the aliens.

It’s a good old fashioned vampire tale, this, and it’s loaded with classic elements of the series from this era. It’s a full on UNIT adventure for starters, and the Brigadier has his hands full with an inquiry from the Ministry of Defence lead by a bloated self-important underling named Chin. Despite being a separate entity from the MOD, UNIT is still subject to their prying eyes, and the fact that the Doctor doesn’t seem to have any official existence has got Chin right riled. UNIT’s battles with bureaucracy are never ending, with the script writers painting the civil servants as meddlers, untrustworthy and ultimately as fools who get in over their heads, and the theme will return several times over the course of Perwee’s era on the show.

Check out the wacky design of Axos. Even from the outside it is a bit ivky looking with gills and moist yellow flesh and an airlock which looks a lot like a lamprey’s mouth. Inside is no better; fleshy walls and floors, ganglia hanging off the walls, and all nature of organic stylings to reinforce that Axos is alive and to walk inside is to be literally in the belly of the beast. By contrast, the Axon family who greet the Doctor and company are statuesque golden creatures, very slim and fit looking… so why they are living inside this flying lung is anyone’s guess. I mean – every time I watch this one I feel like the smell inside Axos would make me gag. But there are also the “other” Axons to contend with – the blobby “depersonalized” tendrilled monsters whose touch can kill. Of course the perfect golden Axons are the ones everyone gets to meet and to see; they prefer it if you don’t see their true form. Unless you are about to be killed, then they are fine with it.

The Master is along for the ride again having pointed Axos towards Earth and promising it a good time there. The Axons are holding his TARDIS as insurance that he co-operates with them, but whose side is he really on this time? Destroying Earth and humiliating the Doctor would suit him fine but on his terms; to be forced to follow someone else’s design is a bit of a comedown and as soon as he gets a chance he starts playing both sides. His swaying allegiances do tend to annoy after a while but as it happens we are just at our third Master story so it's not become a visible habit yet.

Claws goes into an interesting place where the Doctor's exile is concerned; yes he's stuck on Earth for his crimes but the extent of the Time Lords' sentence is a bit more pronounced with him having no access to his memories about time travel. Axos can see that there are blocks in his mind but the Doctor can't overcome them on his own. It's obvious that he has been trying to get the TARDIS working through guesswork as the console is a mess of wires and parts when we see it, although the central column has finally been replaced with something newer. His desperation to escape and be free is evident, and his occasional outbursts at people he is stuck with only illustrate that fact more, although I think that yelling at Chin and people like him is perfectly acceptable.

The Doctor's exile continues, although with a bit more control of the TARDIS by the time the menace has been dealt with. And a bit more mobility will come in handy in the near future.

NEXT EPISODE: COLONY IN SPACE

Deadly Reunion

Somewhere after the end of the Second World War, Lieutenant Alistair Gordon Lethbridge Stewart is on a recce in Greece. Separated from his division he meets a family of three living in isolation in the countryside and is drawn towards the eldest daughter, Sephie. Before he knows it, he is in love, and finds himself drawn into the family's secret: they are the last of the Greek gods and Hades, lord of the underworld, is making a push for power once again. Flash forward to the UNIT days and Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart has his hands full with a massive pop concert which he knows is just a big drug deal in disguise. But the supplier, a Mr Hadley, has much bigger plans than simply recreating Woodstock. The Doctor has suspicions that an affluent family watching from the sidelines can help. And the Brigadier thinks he knows the girl.

This one was really hard for me to read. Hard because it was not enjoyable. Penned by the duo of Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks - the elder statesmen of the Pertwee era - I thought this was going to be a defining piece of literature, something we fans of the classic era would devour and scream to the heavens why oh why was THIS not made on television. The answer is because it's not very good. Oh sure it's got everything it needs to be good, it's got the UNIT crew together and it's got the architects of the whole UNIT putting the words together, only they really aren't good prose writers. I realize this sort of statement doesn't sit well with a lot of fans of this duo and it is not meant to be a major slag-off - without them the series would probably have died in the early 70s but their skills were not in writing the scripts but in taking them and imagining them for the screen.

Part one of the book is set in the Brig's pre-UNIT days and he's a lot more optimistic in his youth. He falls for Sephie pretty hard, and she in turn for him, and literally goes through Hell for her with the assistance of her brother, Hermy. The entire first half of this story is like this, which would have been fine as a story of its own instead of cut down to serve as a really long prologue to a Doctor Who story. It's set far enough back to not really collide with the recent Lethbridge Stewart series which ran mostly parallel to the final season with Troughton in the role, and it does pay homage to the New Adventures continuity of the Brig's relationship with his eventual wife (then ex-wife in Scales of Injustice) Fiona. It just feels so... slow. This was the part of the book that really took me the longest amount of time, and it's not because the Brigadier's early years are not interesting by any stretch, it's just not written with any real style.

When we get to the second part where the Doctor is present, there's a jump in the quality of the writing and although the descriptive narrative is a bit thin, the characterizations are spot on - so good one can almost hear the voices of the actors and "see" them interacting. There's not a lot of detail added to the characters though, mostly because Dicks (I'm sure this was the part he wrote) assumes we already know them inside and out (and maybe we do, this was actually published in 1993 as a bit of a 40th anniversary special) so why take them anywhere new. There's continuity to be observed of course, but a lot can still be done within its bounds. Of course no celebration of the show (or at least this era of it) is complete without the Master, and when he does make his appearance it's actually not that impressive or necessary. He is actually pretty inconsequential to the story and his presence is just a waste of him - I can see he was tossed in as an ingredient to a UNIT era story but he deserved better than to just be a bit player.

Man that was rough to read though. The lesson here should be just because you feel you should be nostalgic doesn't mean you just just go ahead and do it for its own sake. A 40th anniversary special should have had more meat to it, and really either half of Deadly Reunion would have served well if it had been fully developed instead of just being squished together under the anniversary banner. Anniversary stories run this risk of turning into nonsense as it is, one only has to look at what was served up in 2013 for the 50th for proof of that.

Oh well. Back to the DVDs...

NEXT EPISODE: CLAWS OF AXOS