Nightdreamers

The TARDIS makes an unexpected landing on the moon of Verd on Periheilion night. There's a wedding in planning and a play to celebrate it is being rehearsed in the forest. But the wedding has been planned against the wishes of the bride, Ria, and she wants to run away with her cousin, Tonio. The gravity of the moon is experiencing localized failures throwing the whole place into chaos. The locals live in fear of the Nighdreamers, and the Doctor is set for a confrontation with the Nightdreamer King himself.

So it's another of the Telos novellas here, originally published in 2002 to slip in right after Planet of the Daleks with Jo still hemming and hawing over her decision to stay with the Doctor or to have gone to live on Skaro with young Latep. I don't know what version of Planet author Tom Arden was watching, but I don't really remember the fleeting friendship between Jo and Latep turning into some burning love desire over the two episodes they were in each other's company. Indeed, Jo's rather casual dismissal of him on screen didn't indicate that she was taking his sudden proposal seriously, but now as Jo meets two lovers who are forced apart by an arranged marriage she is all wondering what could have been with Latep.

Nightdreamers is pretty much Tom Arden trying to go Shakespearean comedy, drawing heavily on A Midsummer Night's Dream for it's plot paralles. This may actually be the shortest of the Telos Novella range at 104 pages (and a price tag on the back of $49.95 which I really hope I did not actually pay) and I found it didn't really entertain so much as annoy. Maybe it was supposed to be taken as genre and I missed that point - I'm not against the tone of a story going against the grain of what's been established on screen during respective eras, but Nightdreamers just felt a bit... silly. Or maybe fairy stories and magic elves aren't really my thing.

NEXT EPISODE: STORM OF THE HOROFAX

The Conquest of Far

En route back to Earth after leaving Spiridon, the TARDIS is thrown off course and lands on the planet Far. The Doctor and Jo investigate and find a civilization in ruins and the Daleks in control. Jo is captured and the Doctor falls in with an Earth Alliance fleet on its way to liberate Far from the occupation, but it will be no easy feat. The Daleks are entrenched with an army of a million, they have a secret weapon which when unleashed will mean ultimate victory, and worst of all, they are expecting the Doctor and the liberation forces.

The third volume of third Doctor adventures debuts with a guarantee of success - the Daleks are here! Interesting thing about them this time is they are clearly the new series Daleks as they can be heard moving, and the Doctor even comments that they must be of an advanced design when he sees what they are capable of. their firepower, however, is classic sound effect all the way. Interestingly enough, though, these Daleks do not recognize this incarnation of the Doctor, and they have to submit Jo to mind analysis to determine if he is the genuine article. They are certainly harsher sounding than the ones they just beat on Spiridon - courtesy of Nick Briggs and his voice modulations.

The Doctor may not be known to the Daleks but the Earth Alliance military certainly know who he is; they have a full back history on him over the years and through several incarnations (again they never decribe who they are looking at and we get no soundbytes). Their initial reaction is of course to distrust and lock him up on their ship before they realize he might be useful to them. Typical military, as the Doctor would say.

There's something not quite explained in this one, though; the TARDIS obviously makes some kind of slip in time as well as when the Doctor and Jo left Spiridon Earth had an Empire and female president, and here it's an Alliance with other races and a male president. And the ante is totally upped now, going from ten thousand to one million Daleks in hiding in an ultimate "mine's bigger than yours" kind of way.

Stunning as it is to hear the third Doctor back in action against the Daleks it's not really a complex story at all, and the secret weapon is a bit far fetched when it is revealed. They can't all be the same calibre of course, and the strength of this one might not be plot complexity but in the rich sound design that has been created to bring Far to life in ones ears. Some of it gets a bit lost in layering when on a 5.1 surround system though - normally these I hear on headphones or in the car. There were a couple moments where Tim Treloar didn't sound as Pertwee as he could but we're not after perfection here - if we were there'd be the usual observations of Katy Manning's voice which this time actually holds up really well. These things just keep getting better and better.

NEXT EPISODE: NIGHTDREAMERS

Planet of the Daleks

The Doctor and Jo pursue the Daleks across the galaxy to their base on the hostile jungle planet Spridon. A group of Thals have also come to the planet to thwart what they believe to be a science expedition, with the Daleks attempting to learn the secret of invisibility from the natives. The Doctor knows that nothing is ever that simple with the Daleks, and knowing that they are trying to provoke a war between Earth and Draconia there must be more to what is going on. The truth eventually comes out though: Spiridon is the staging ground for the Dalek invasion, and with an army of no less than ten thousand Daleks with the power of invisibility, it's not going to be just an invasion - it will be a slaughter.

So I was watching this one today and I got to wondering if this really was a new story or just something going on in tandem with The Dalek Master Plan. Daleks holed up on a jungle planet working on a secret weapon? Check. Invisible natives? Check. Nasty plant life? Check. A desperately overwhelmed force on a secret mission against the Daleks? Yeah... Terry Nation recycling plot points but to be fair, the narrative was slightly different but not by much. But then again how do you do invasion stories and keep it fresh.

Visually the adventure was just packed with Daleks - there are always heaps of them in the shot even if a lot of them are dummy props and only three are manned and operated. Four when you take in the variant Dalek Supreme (a recycled unit from one of the Peter Cushing films). Interesting, they re-used the gold Dalek from Day of the Daleks at the end of Frontier in Space but he's not to be seen again; this one is bigger and far more imposing anyway. And he's actually meaner if you can get meaner as a Dalek; when the force leader on Spiridon fails at keeping things under control this one just blasts him to bits without compunction. And there are plenty of Dalek casualties to go round aside from that one. A few Thals too.

The Thals at this point in time have developed their own space travel technology but it's not really said who is in control on Skaro now. The Thals have gotten back to their roots where aggression is concerned and are taking the fight to the Daleks without persuasion this time. The Dalek war from The Daleks was so long ago that it has faded into legend - legend in which the Doctor, his companions and the TARDIS have all been immortalized. But given that this takes place in the same time period as Frontier in Space and it was "generations ago" it brings some of the Dalek story continuity into question; in The Dalek Invasion of Earth which is set somewhere around 2164 the Doctor refers to his first Dalek encounter as taking place in the far future, but there's only maybe 400 years between that and Planet. So "generations ago" might not be as long it sounds. There are no other references to other Dalek stories so one doesn't have to get a headache trying to do gymnastics around them. But there's proof that the Thals are human too - one of them has a thing for Jo.

As with all these diabolical plans the Doctor and friends triumph, but as the Dalek Supreme reminds us, the Daleks are delayed but never defeated. If we were going to right to the next televised story that threat would hang in the air for a bit and then be swept away by another, but there's a few additional tales now, and Big Finish is up first throwing the Doctor and Jo right back into conflict with the Daleks again...

NEXT EPISODE: THE CONQUEST OF FAR

Frontier in Space

Somewhere in the 26th century, Earth is at the height of it's Empire. Colonies are formed one after another as the Human influence expands across the galaxy. The rival Draconian Empire is also expanding and a truce made in the wake of a war keeps the two states apart, even if suspicion remains. The Doctor and Jo arrive as an Earth cargo ship is attacked by a force of Ogrons, but the Human pilots believe it was a Draconian raiding party. Caught between the politics of both races the Doctor and Jo try to discover who is using the Ogrons to sow the seeds of chaos and propel the galaxy towards war again. And when the Master appears on the scene they think they have the answer, but his presence is only one piece of a far reaching plot.

The Draconians were only ever seen once in the entire series and it's a tremendous shame; they are a fascinating race of reptilian humanoids with an aesthetic appearance somewhere between a Samauri and an actual dragon, thus earning then the unflattering - nay, racist - nickname of Dragons by people with a grudge against them. The species is far from perfect and has some tremendous sexist views where women are not permitted to speak, although how they manage to deal with an Earth Empire with a female head of state is a puzzle. The realization of the Draconians is particularly effective, with their dominant reptilian features including a high crested head and a pointy beard and all created with very effective half-masks instead of complete rubber suits.

Oh yes the Earth Empire. But not in a classical sense; there is no one person sitting on a throne being called Emperor. The Draconians have an Emperor as head of state but Earth's leader is an elected President, this time a woman whose name we never know, she is just "the President". She is on the edge of losing it, though; the constant accusations by the Draconians along with her own peoples' claims of Draconian attacks leave her with very few options outside of failing diplomacy, and her pushy military adviser is chomping at the bit to get back to war, as he was the man who started the first one. The people have had enough - they want open war on the Dragons and there are Draconians who want open war on the Humans but both leaders know that such a war would ruin both Empires and leave the galaxy in ruins.

There's no way that the Master is around by coincidence with all this going on. Having escaped the wrath of Kronos he is free once more to create havoc across the galaxy without compunction, but in a characteristically polite move he makes sure to rescue the Doctor and Jo from their respective prisons (the Doctor is sent to a penal colony on the moon, so weather control from there is no longer a thing it seems) and keep them as his own prisoners. He knows that the Doctor has a way of ruining things for him so getting him where he can see him is the best plan, even if he is going to kill him anyway. Unfortunately this is the last time we ever see this version of the Master as actor Roger Delgado was killed in a car accident after he had completed this story, and it's a tremendous shame as he brought such dignity to a role that would eventually just be reduced to some manic nonsense fluff and be skewered on the Sword of Stupid when recast as a female. But Frontier at best serves up a consistent Master, one who never ceased to plan and scheme and work towards killing the Doctor in their universal game of cat and mouse.

Continuity wise there is a reference to the other moments in Earth's Empire, to Solos in The Mutants where the Empire was contracting and colonies were leaving in droves. When the Doctor and Jo emerge from the TARDIS in episode one, both are still wearing the same clothes from Carnival of Monsters which implies that there is no gap between stories and Suns of Caresh and the first volume of third Doctor audio should really take place after The Three Doctors. Small details there and in the end there are no real gaffes in continuity either way.  The first time I ever got into this one, though, was back when Target novels would rename the story for print if it wasn't as exciting as they wanted: Frontier in Space became The Space War and was graced with a really striking cover displaying an Orgon in all its simian nastiness. I still wonder to this day how they got away with cramming all six episodes of story into such a short format, but again these were really just kids books in the end so who would notice if it wasn't the most descriptive narrative.

Frontier in Space has the distinction of being one of those episodes which lead right into the next one, creating a larger picture than just its six episodes. Here's where it's hard to avoid a spoiler given that the next episode will be revealed in just a few lines, but when the big threat to galactic peace is finally revealed, it's up to the Doctor to take the fight to it, chasing across the galaxy to stop a coming massacre...

NEXT EPISODE: PLANET OF THE DALEKS

The Suns of Caresh

The planet Caresh is in trouble. A woman named Troy Game finds herself on Earth with no real memories of why she is there, only that she is lost and her world, Caresh, faces disaster. A man named Lord Roche holds the key to Caresh's salvation but she does not know where he is. The Doctor and Jo Grant cross paths with Troy Game while investigating what the Doctor initially believes to be a simple matter of small temporal anomaly, but as Troy Game's memories clear and the Doctor's investigation broadens it appears that the events on both worlds are connected, and that while Earth's problems are minor, Caresh itself it at risk of destruction. 

I'm going to start with an observation about the cover. The Doctor and Jo have shaved heads, which is not something that happens on the televised series at all. Given that the novel is set sometime shortly after the Doctor is freed by the Time Lords it would imply that there is a big gap - a couple years potentially - between the events of The Suns of Caresh and the next televised episode where the Doctor and Jo would appear with full heads of hair. Interesting that - and fertile ground for the Doctor and Jo to go off and do all sorts of things together while their hair grows back in. Unless some fan wanker is going to suggest that they just wear wigs for the next little while. I'll go with my own theory, so this would be a great spot to drop any further third Doctor and Jo tales unless they have some pretty specific references to television.

And now the story itself. Paul Saint wrote it with far more intelligence than was the norm for the BBC Books range, which is not to say that this was a more complicated story or that it was hard to follow - it just feels like someone put a lot of work into detailing it. The fact that the type font is so small indicates that someone editing the range felt that rather than slice the narrative to make the page count might have chosen a way to get more content on the page (although my eyes... oh my eyes). The storytelling doesn't blurt out a lot of detail and there are implications used in dialogue instead. There's also the matter of the planet Caresh and the cultural norms that Troy Game mentions from time to time, usually to contrast against what she sees among the people of Earth.

There's also a bit of Time Lord content added in which is handled well. After all, so far the only other Time Lords we have seen have either been evil (the Monk, the Master), stuffy (the Time Lords at the Doctor's trial), slightly mad (Iris Wildthyme) and... well.. Susan. How refreshing to have other Time Lords in the story and not have it be all about their plans to kill the Doctor or nag him or pester him. I speak of Roche and a Time Lady called Solenti - Roche is in it up to his eyeballs with what's going on with Caresh and the snooty Solenti knows a lot more than she lets on and it all drives the Doctor nuts to have to sort out their business. But neither of these characters goes over the top as other Time Lords have in past, which is good to see. Although "over the top" was never said about Susan. Ever.

NEXT EPISODE: FRONTIER IN SPACE