The Mega

The Doctor is furious. The British military have developed a new weapon: a gas that will target enemies down to their chromosomes and make killing easier. But the Doctor is not the only one; the public know and are protesting like mad. And there is one more voice in the chorus: that of an alien race known as the Mega. They demand that Britain disarm unilaterally or else face destruction by their hand. The Doctor and Jo fake defecting to the other side of the Iron Curtain to get to the bottom of things and find the Prince of a small nation with the Mega on his side; they have supplied them with their own weapon to ensure the demands for peace are met, but while the Prince may want the world to be at peace, exactly what is in it for the Mega?

The Mega is an oddity for the Big Finish Lost Stories range: it is the single contribution to feature the third Doctor from the UNIT era, and the last one that was released. Originally written by Bill Strutton it was declined as a script for television, possibly because it was too touchy a subject with the civil unrest that runs through it, with UNIT trying to contain riots and protests for peace. And then there's the murder of the British Prime Minister as well - that might not have gone over well. The PM's death, though, is an important plot twist and can't be cut out no matter how edgy it might have been, so censors might have had trouble with reworking the script. Maybe. It's a bit different from the other stories of the era, a bit grittier and nastier but never dull. On the other hand the real stopper of the show was probably the Mega themselves; they are beings with swirling vortexes of energy for heads and they can destroy with electrical blasts, which would probably have been tough for the effects department to realize.

As far as fitting in with the stories around it, as it was written for the era it fits in quite well, it's just a bit out of place as far as my project here is concerned - Corporal Bell is still on the Brigadier's staff and she was not seen again after Day of the Daleks (a plot thread tied off in David A. McIntee's The Face of the Enemy) so as far as maintaining that continuity goes this would have to be placed somewhere before The Curse of Peladon. 

The Mega is realized very well given that Katy Manning and Richard Franklin are not only reprising their old roles as Jo and Mike Yates but they are also providing vocal approximations of the Doctor (Manning) and the Brigadier and Benton (Franklin). They are also giving a bit more of the old chemistry that existed between Jo and Yates which had viewers wondering if they were going to be the next couple of Who in the same vein as Ian and Barbara or Ben and Polly. After all these years they can still make it happen as far as the scripts allow them to - this would be the first time they worked together since they departed the series.

Only thing this one has against it is its length; at six episodes it's a long listen and has to be taken episode by episode just like the longer episodes on television. It doesn't, however, follow the same pattern of a lot of the six parters where it feels like the real story ended in episode four and there is something new happening in five and six - it holds up the whole way through and would have made some fascinating television. Big Finish deserves a lot of thanks for adding this to the Lost Stories range.

And there are still some Big Finish episodes to enjoy before returning to the televised series, but a BBC Novel is next...

NEXT EPISODE: VERDIGRIS