Amorality Tale

When Sarah spots a picture of the Doctor shaking hands with a notorious gangster in a 1952 newspaper clipping she is naturally curious, and so is the Doctor as he doesn't remember the event. The pair take the TARDIS back in time and go undercover in the weeks leading up to the Great Smog that choked London and killed thousands in December of 1952; the Doctor as a watchmaker and Sarah as first a barmaid and then as a member of staff for gangster Tommy Ramsey. The Doctor realizes early on that he is not going to be able to stop what is coming; this is history like any other and he cannot intervene to save anyone. But there is more going on, with the alien race known as the Xhinn lurking in the background pushing events along.

Doctor Who often goes to this place where the Doctor knows that history is set in stone and he's not able to help no matter how painful that realization is, but there's always the first time for the companion - this time it's Sarah - who wants to try. The inevitability of  the deaths of all the people in the streets is horrifying enough for Sarah, but the culture shock is something else entirely, mostly the sexism she witnesses through the attitudes of Tommy and his cronies. Consider as well that Sarah is twenty three years old, so she would have been one year old when all this went on although she was born in Liverpool and her family were safe miles away; this wouldn't even really be history to her being so close to her own time.

The subplot of alien involvement behind a disaster is nothing new either, although in this case the Xhinn aren't really causing the bigger problem, but they are creating a zombie army of undead policemen to carry out their work and campaign of terror. The Xhinn aren't especially malevolent, they just want what they want and their moral compass doesn't really cover the rights and wrongs of what they are doing to the people of London to achieve their plans. They even go so far as to recognize the contribution the Doctor could make if he would only side with them.

This notion of going undercover as a watchmaker is something new for the third Doctor; this kind of subterfuge is more akin to his later selves. The Doctor is becoming a bit more introspective this time; the revisionists want to peg it to his approaching regeneration even though it's not ominously foreshadowed as it has been before and will be again. But Sarah observes that the Doctor only just escaped death on Peladon so he had been taking things differently since then. Exactly which escape from death is not explained - either the threat of execution by Azaxyr, escaping the security system traps on the refinery or the almost beating death by Ettis - and it's not as if he hasn't gotten away from death before, but he's being more cautious about things. This lingering in the background and observing is a new tactic for him. This plot would only work with Sarah at his side though; she's more adept to this kind of investigation than Jo was. Spy stuff vs journalist stuff.... there is a difference.

My first kick at this one was in actual print; I remember only too well reading this one on a stationary bike at the gym years and years ago. This time I didn't have the kind of time to invest in sitting and just reading - life's too busy right now - so I chose to take advantage of the audiobook version read by Dan Starkey, who doesn't do a bad version of Pertwee at all when it comes to his dialogue. I hit play and carried on with my minor league household tasks. I wish there were more of the BBC Books done this way though - sitting and reading isn't a luxury I often have, and when I go driving a long way on my own I'd prefer an audiobook over the radio. An adventure within an adventure. The next one up is not on audio though, so back to my reading chair I go.

NEXT EPISODE: ISLAND OF DEATH

The Monster of Peladon

Fifty years since Peladon joined the Galactic Federation there is trouble on the horizon. War has broken out with Galaxy Five and Peladon's mineral resources are needed to sustain the war effort. The miners of Peladon, however, feel cheated of the benefits of Federation membership and refuse to work in fear of the spirit of Aggedor, which they claim has appeared to them and killed. The Doctor and Sarah arrive in the midst of the turmoil and offer to help the embattled Queen Thalira restore order to her world. But as the Doctor begins to investigate the apparitions, a group of Ice Warriors arrive to enforce the Federation's agenda to continue mining, and they will use any means necessary to ensure that they get what they want.

Peladon has changed little since the Doctor and Jo visited, although this time the TARDIS doesn't do a header off a cliff. The tunnels used as secret passages in the previous televised episode are now the gateway to Peladon's vast trisilicate mines where toils the working class miners who all have this curious hairstyle that reminds me of badgers. Alpha Centauri is still there, now working as an ambassador to the Federation, and he saves the Doctor from a gritty death by vouching for his credentials. The Citadel has not changed either, its corridors and chambers still very medieval in feel and lit by guttering torches hanging from the wall sconces. The big difference, though, is that Thalira now rules as Peladon himself passed away when she was a small child, leaving her to be raised by Chancellor Ortron and more or less under his control. Unlike Hepesh before him, Ortron embraces the presence of the Federation and is committed to the planet doing its part as a member nation, but he stops short of complying with Ice Warriors as they threaten to murder the workers who do not comply.

Yes the Ice Warriors are back as baddies this time around and there is a hoard of them; all the old costumes used over the years are back in service to swell their ranks, and they are led by an Ice Lord named Azaxyr.  This force, however, turns out not to be working for the Federation but are a breakaway group allied with Galaxy Five, a detail which is explained but not fleshed out enough on screen - but was done back in The Prisoner of Peladon when refugees from the political upheaval on Mars were coming to Peladon in droves. Okay it's a big retcon fix, but it didn't really rewrite anything, just gave it a bit more clarity and depth. Mind you with six episodes to work with here you'd think they might have devoted a few minutes to the backstory behind the Martian / Ice Warrior split, rather than just write them off as  "splinter group". The retcon fix makes it a far bigger deal, but on the whole the Ice Warriors not on Peladon are still noble creatures in the Federation, despite how easily they gun down a group of miners to show they aren't fooling around this time. And they aren't acting on their own either; Federation turncoat Eckersly is just the ally they need, and he's so cocky and vain as to assume he can boss Azaxyr around - if their plans had worked out it is doubtful that Eckersly would have lived long after.

Women's Lib gets its moment again, though, with Sarah egging on Thalira to be the Queen and take charge of her world rather than let Ortron subvert her. It gets a bit preachy now that I've seen it in the context of current affairs here in 2018, but again, it was 1974 and things were changing fast. If you ask me THAT was the time to consider the role of the Doctor being cast as a female, right when things were being shaken up. But it's been said elsewhere that Sarah shows the whole notion of the strong female character throughout the whole episode in her actions, and then out comes the awkward feminist rant to diminish it. Her impassioned speech, though, is a real contrast to Thalira's vacant (and possibly stoned) presence, and shows that yes the Queen has a long way to go before she can really be in charge.

And speaking of shaken up, I remember as a child watching the climax of episode four with mounting horror as the unthinkable happened: the third Doctor, master of the arts of Venusian akido, gets the shit beaten out of him in a fight with a miner named Ettis. It starts as a pretty even match of swords (where a miner learned that is a puzzle - there may have been more to Ettis than was explained) but then deteriorates into what is referred to in professional wrestling as a squash job. Actor Ralph Watson wears that as a badge of honour in the DVD extras, rightly pointing out that Ettis is the only character ever to dust up the Doctor to such an extent.

So with the retcon fix of Prisoner of Peladon in between this, Pertwee's Doctor gets to complete a Peladon trilogy of sorts. The television series never goes back to Peladon, and the Ice Warriors are not seen on screen again until 2013, but Big Finish and Virgin Publishing make sure to go back to these classics in later days.

The Doctor, meanwhile, would have been making his last stand next, but BBC Books have provided a couple more tales to put that moment off...

NEXT EPISODE: AMORALITY TALE

The Ghosts of N Space

Again with that retro-stylin artwork

The Brigadier has taken some time off to visit his Uncle Mario in Sicily. Mario owns a castle on an island which has become an object of interest for an American thug gangster, Max and when the Brigadier witnesses some supernatural occurrences he can’t help but believe there is a connection. Without hesitation he calls in the Doctor. Sarah is also in Sicily; she’s on vacation with Jeremy and contemplating her future as a journalist. When she spots the Brigadier there she knows there’s something going on, and she is not entirely surprised to eventually encounter the Doctor. The barriers between this universe and the next are breaking down at the castle, allowing N-forms from the other side to cross over. And Max wants to be the ruler of the domain on the other side, of a virtual Hell.

Banking on the success of The Paradise of Death BBC Radio went back into the studio with the third Doctor, the Brigadier, Sarah Jane Smith and…. Ugh, Jeremy Fitzoliver. Well, three out of four isn’t bad I guess. But yes, here’s that team again together for another adventure and this time it’s a six episode epic, one whole instalment longer than before.

I think though that the novelty of the audio itself might have let the production team get a bit lazy on this outing; I found this episode actually felt long and some of it felt a bit forced, like the long and ultimately fruitless journey the Doctor and Sarah take into the past in the TARDIS. The dialogue seems a bit strained when there is an action sequence taking place; there’s a painful blow for blow by the Brigadier as he watches Jeremy fending off a floating monk with a device provided by the Doctor. And speaking of pain – Sandra Dickinson’s voice as the gun moll. Yikes.

But that’s all really small stuff – this is an extra episode of Doctor Who made in a time when we

didn’t think we would get any new material aside from the novels being published by Virgin. This script actually made it to the Missing Adventures novels range so we got that double dose of fun with it, and the fact that it was made for radio kept that little fire of hope going for those of us back there who still believed that one day the Doctor would be back. These days the worst that happens is the new generation of fans wait a whole year for a new series. Poor things. But without this episode as well as the previous, there’d be less of a chance for Big Finish to get itself established in the future and give us so much more. It’s just sad that all three leads in this one have passed away and we’ll not hear from them again together.

The Doctor doesn’t believe in ghosts, but he does believe that the barriers between realities can wear thin here and there and anything can get across, including himself and Sarah at one point. But N-Space? There’s a bit of a collision there in the lore of the series, as N-Space was referred to as the “normal” space time continuum that we live in as opposed to an “E-Space” or an exospace time continuum. This time though, it’s just some hell place where monsters live.

As far as fitting in with the season it’s placed in, Ghosts of N Space makes Sarah’s association with the Doctor seem a bit more loose than it seems when they are roaming around together from planet to planet. In Paradise of Death Sarah was still in awe of what went on with Irongron, even if she couldn’t sell the idea to her editor, Clarinda. Here she is again unable to capture anyone’s attention with “the Dalek piece” which would be her adventures on Exxilon as a feature, although given that the Daleks have been around already when they tried to murder Sir Reginald Styles it’s more likely that there’s some sort of publication ban on any reference to them. Which also makes her acceptance at UNIT a bit more interesting; did the Brigadier decide to allow a journalist free access to a top secret military establishment just to keep an eye on her?

All just speculation of course, but fun nonetheless. Just don’t call it a fan theory please.

NEXT EPISODE: THE MONSTER OF PELADON

Death to the Daleks

The TARDIS experiences a total power failure while en route to the planet Florana, stranding the Doctor and Sarah on a rocky barren world called Exxilon. Also on Exxilon is an expedition from Earth sent to mine for a substance called parrinium which can cure the plague that is ravaging the colonies of the empire, and without power and under constant attack from the natives, their mission does not stand any chance of success. A Dalek taskforce arrives as well, experiencing the same power drain and rendering the monsters defenseless, and an uneasy alliance is formed to determine how to restore power and escape the planet. All evidence points to a gleaming white city which the Exxilons worship as a god. But the Doctor knows that any alliance with the Daleks is doomed, and once they have weapons again they will resume their murderous ways.

This one often gets panned as a bad Dalek story but I don’t really see how anyone can really say that. The Daleks themselves are painted a very shiny silver so they look pretty striking, and they are put right out of their element for a change with their greatest enemy right there in front of them and no power to kill him. Here’s where we see some Dalek ingenuity at work, with them designing a machine gun weapon for themselves so they can fire projectiles and regain their advantage over the others. How, I ask, can this be a bad Dalek story? There’s also this opinion in Doctor Who that a companion isn’t really a companion until they face the Daleks. This criteria makes Sarah legit now - how can THAT be bad?

It’s well moody as well with the foggy greynesss of Exxilon as a backdrop but a distinctly different sound to the score this time; there’s no electronic component to the music, just woodwinds and a little bit of percussion. And then there are moments where there is no music to accentuate the tension of a scene, just as effective in my books. The Exxilons themselves are pretty nightmarish people; big bulging eyes and bald heads, not the smartest things out there but they are a brutish mob able to pummel a Dalek into a dented heap. The second Exxlion species, though, isn’t as primitive and has a better grasp of the situation; they know that the city their ancestors built is the source of the planet’s problems and that it must be destroyed before it destroys everything else.

I found an interesting bit of visual continuity in this one which probably means nothing but is still fun to play with. The members of the Earth expedition, the Marine Space Corps, all have these blue uniforms with a silver sideways arrowhead logo on them, and the TV series Blake’s 7 has a similar motif on its Terran Federation officers and troops. As both were written by Terry Nation it’s fun to think that this might be the some earlier moment in that continuity; Nation used the surname Tarrant a great deal in B7 and here we have another one, this time Jill Tarrant of the Earth force. As far as Dalek continuity goes though its hard to really place this one anywhere as there is no date of reference aside from there having been a Dalek war at some point not too long before this, recently enough for one of the Earth force to have lost his father to that same war.

My personal memories of this one, though, go way way back; I read the Target novel before I saw the

episode. Of all places, the Meadowbrook Public School library had a copy of this one which I gleefully borrowed at a very early age and enjoyed every page of it. I remember not wanting to give it back, so before it was due I recorded myself reading it on cassette, with terrible Dalek voices thrown in. The book will have long since been pulped but I was told that the cassette tape is still in my mother's possession; I only found out because she called the other day asking if I could find her a new player so she could listen to it again. Horrified doesn't even begin to describe my reaction.

If only missing episodes would turn up the same way.

NEXT EPISODE: THE GHOSTS OF N-SPACE

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

The Doctor and Sarah return to London and find the city evacuated. London has been overrun with dinosaurs which mysteriously appear and disappear, causing chaos. UNIT and the regular army are working together to solve the puzzle and the Doctor arrives at just the right time as far as the Brigadier is concerned, although the regular army are not as welcoming. While the Doctor tries to identify a traitor in UNIT's ranks and trace the time disturbances causing the dinosaurs to manifest, Sarah finds herself in a spaceship bound for a new Earth where humankind is going to start all over again and not damage the world with technology and pollution.

Well it ain't Jurassic Park, I'll say that right away. These lumpy plasticine dinosaurs are not even up to the calibre of the original Land of the Lost episodes. The story is ambitious, though, and determinedly uses good old CSO and models and some puppets to bring the dinosaurs to life on the screen as the terrorize London. It's a good thing they're not really what the story is about. Their presence was supposed to be a big secret, so much in fact that the first episode is just called Invasion but fan rumour has it that this is why the first episode was lost for some time and only available as a black and white print: it was mistaken for the first episode of the similarly named Patrick Troughton Cyberman story and junked. Like Planet of the Daleks, though, the DVD gets the colourization treatment and can be enjoyed properly.

The dinosaurs are not invading with any kind of plan; they are not that intelligent. Someone is mucking around with time, which is causing the dinosaurs to manifest. It's far more advanced than anything on Earth but it's not aliens, not this time; the threat is home grown and masterminded by maniacs. There's a massive conspiracy at work stretching from high levels of government and right into the ranks of UNIT itself, and the goal is almost as shocking as the presence of the dinosaurs themselves.

There's a sense of some change in things since Jo Grant left, notably that the Doctor has a new car which he did not have anytime before, so maybe some time has passed since Jo's departure. The car in question is a brand new sleek spacecraft like hovercraft which was actually Jon Pertwee's own personal property and used only twice in the series. I'm sure that someone somewhere is itching to write it an introduction story or even retcon it into canon during Jo's time. Note that as canon has now come into question with The Paradise of Death, this would be Sarah's third outing with the Doctor and she has been elevated in status to the Doctor's assistant, a title he grants her to avoid her being evacuated with the rest of the civilians. The Brigadier accepts her presence more easily than one would expect, but after Paradise its now a bit better explained. And she gets right to work charming and lightly flirting her way through the UNIT men, notably with Sergeant Benton and Captain Yates.

Oh yes Yates. He's not been entirely well since that deal at Global Chemicals when he was taken over by the BOSS computer and ordered to kill the Doctor. He has a better appreciation for life and for the world as a whole having seen what pollution can cause. He'd like to see the world made into a better place, and when he finds someone trying to do that he offers all the help he can, with his place within UNIT being an asset to those people.

As with The Dalek Invasion of Earth, there are lots of visuals of a creepy empty London, and once more if you watch this one and then toss in your DVD of 28 Days Later some of the similarities between the shots in each production are very hard to miss. One turns out to be a lot more effective at telling its story, but it also has the benefit of having been produced in an era where it's easier to shut down London streets instead of sneaking around with a film camera at 6 AM and hoping nothing drives through the shot. In some cases it might have been a better choice to leave the dinosaurs out of the shot, too.

NEXT EPISODE: DEATH TO THE DALEKS

The Paradise of Death

The Parakon Corporation is set to open Space Wold - a new theme park showcasing rides and attractions and monsters all from out of this world. But mysterious deaths attract the attention of UNIT and the Doctor, as well as that of journalist Sarah Jane Smith. The Doctor realizes that the monsters in the exhibits are real although they are not correctly named by Space World, and the Brigadier tries out some all too realistic virtual reality. But Sarah finds her way deep inside the amusement park and is transported to the planet Parakon, where the plans for Earth are far from amusing.

Imagine this for a moment: it was 1993 and Doctor Who had been off the air for four years and despite rumors and misleading information in fan networks there was no way the series was going to be back anytime soon. Virgin Publishing was keeping us all amused with a new novel every month and then the BBC did something surprising: they commissioned a new Doctor Who adventure. Hope that it would be televised was raised and then it became known that it would start the trio of Jon Pertwee, Nicholas Courtney and Elisabeth Sladen, all of whom would be visibly older now than they were in their original run on television twenty years earlier. BBC Radio would broadcast The Paradise of Death and bring these characters back for another episode together, and it was one of the best things to be produced for the series that year.

Paradise was made to drop right in after The Time Warrior and featured the first meeting of Sarah Jane Smith and the Brigadier, which was until then seen to have happened in the following televised story. Normally I would at this point shake my fist angrily and protest these egomaniac writers trying to retcon everything but as the story was written by Barry Letts, who produced the show for all of Pertwee's run as the Doctor I will say nothing. Letts knew what he was doing. Of course he did. More or less. Unlike a Big Finish audio some of the dialogue is there to replace missing narrative and there can be annoying runs of people just saying what is going on around them in unconvincing rants, but it doesn't happen too much. And the Doctor is still rooted to Earth and working with UNIT just as he was in the stories around this one; yes he is free of the exile but Earth has become home base, and it's an interesting question as to how long it would have stayed so if the Doctor hasn't eventually regenerated.

Paradise has the distinction of giving Sarah her own companion as it were in the form of the annoying and dorky Jeremy Fitzoliver. I imagine he was supposed be the comic relief but he's actually pretty cringeworthy and could have been done without. But he and the background of what's going on in Sarah's professional life at Metropolitan are new facets to the popular companion's life, fleshing her story out a bit more. She's not just jumped into the TARDIS right away now in this slightly reimagined setting; she's gone back to work as a journalist but she's also drawn back to the Doctor and comes in contact with UNIT properly. She knows there is a story wherever the Doctor is, but does her editor, Clarinda, buy any of it?

The cover isn't much to look at; they went for the same kind of arts and crafts decoupage look as the

Original cover. Dull.

other BBC Audio releases but it's kinda uninspiring. The original cover used on the cassette release, mind you, left even more to be desired. At least the CD cover used period images. There have been a lot of alternates created on sites like deviantart.com and they gravitate to the new norm of the Big Finish audio covers which are smashing.

Sound design is great although there is a puzzling use of a version of the theme song which would be used from 1980 to 1985; surely the Pertwee era theme would have been a better choice. If we can tinker with the coves til our hearts content, how about the sound? Then we could get some of the sound effects fixed up like the TARDIS doors which are sound effects from The Dominators. No way to make Jon Pertwee sound younger though.

Back to TV now.

NEXT EPISODE: INVASION OF THE DINOSAURS

The Time Warrior

A lone Sontaran warrior, Lynx, crash lands on Earth in the middle ages. Out of necessity Lynx sides with the brutish Irongron and exchanges weapons for shelter, using a limited means of time travel to kidnap scientists from the future to use to repair his ship. UNIT notice the disappearances and place a group of other scientists in similar fields under guard, with the Doctor sitting in to see what he can determine, and he travels back in time to stop Lynx from altering the course of human history.

I had some guests for the viewing of this episode; my friends Leanne and Emily joined me for the start of the third Doctor's final season. The Time Warrior has not only that distinction but it is also the very first time a Sontaran is seen on screen, and it is also the very first appearance of a headstrong young journalist named Sarah Jane Smith. While the Sontarans would return to do battle with the Doctor only three more times in the classic series, they would rank right up there with the Daleks and the Cybermen in classic monster status. Sarah Jane Smith, on the other hand, would be a series legacy, even to current day.

As it was the start of Jon Pertwee's final season there's a perceptible shift in things; the Brigadier is in this one as is UNIT but it's effectively just a cameo in episode one, with the rest of the adventure taking place somewhere else in time. The Doctor's travels on screen alone had been taking him further and further from Earth once more, so to start the season off with the UNIT family left behind would be a sure sign of things to come. The opening titles of the series also got a do-over after four years of a more horror-esque motif, and the diamond logo which was the enduring symbol of the series for decades was introduced. Things just feel different in this one without anything actually being labelled as such and not hinted at either; there are no portents that the third Doctor's days are numbered as there would be in current years on the series.

Sarah Jane Smith is different. Very different. Actress Elisabeth Sladen has said in past that she did not get much of a character brief and had to remind herself of her own notions for Sarah, the biggest one being her sense of righteous indignation. Sarah embodied change in attitudes towards women which were very much on the rise at the time the series was made, and gone now were the days of the heroine being, as script editor Terrance Dicks would say, "tied to the tracks" while the Doctor was left to be heroic. Sarah wasn't interested in taking crap from men, and although it feels a bit preachy to hear her say it, it's far more empowering a character than some social media whiners of the third wave feminist movement of current times. The time Sarah represents actually was one of change, where Women's Lib was the new call to equality as a real concern; too many times it has been invoked recently as a means to just get someone what they themselves wanted, be it a job they were not qualified for, or, worse, attention on a social media platform. Companions after Sarah would no longer be the meeker female stereotypes of the past, and while a character like Barbara Wright was no pushover she was far less likely to take action herself as Sarah would, and would resort to screaming for Ian to help her. If we were to look at Sarah Jane Smith in the context of the series as a whole, she was the turning point for women's roles in Doctor Who; she is to the series what Madonna is to the female pop stars of today. And the same wave of change would lead to the controversial selection of a female lead to play the Doctor here in 2018, even if that choice looks less genuine and more of a stunt casting move. The new series debuts in a few days at time of writing, so soon we shall see if it was a good plan or not.

Political nuances aside the episode is fantastic to watch and enjoy, with the DVD release being one of the few to have had its effects updated to look more like current episode, even if it's still live broadcast quality in studio, with some pretty iffy lighting in a few scenes. But dig this: Hal the archer is played by Jeremy Bulloch, who would in a few years go on to play Boba Fett in two Star Wars films.

So with new companion at his side, the Doctor is ready to take on the universe once more. Sarah would come into her own a bit more through her association with the fourth Doctor and as it were she would only get five outings with the third before he regenerates, but once again there are supplemental materials to give this partnership some more time together, almost doubling their story count, and one of them is next.

NEXT EPISODE: THE PARADISE OF DEATH

The Elixir of Doom

Jo Grant is travelling with Iris Wildthyme and the pair arrive in Los Angeles in the 1930s. Tinsel town is all about monster movies, and the travellers know all about monsters having met enough in their time. But the monsters in the films are a bit too convincing, and upon a closer look are proven to be real aliens working under duress. But the question of how they got here and why they are working for a sadistic studio exec remains. Jo and Iris are not alone in their investigations; it looks as if a future incarnation of the Doctor is here too.

It's double duty for Katy Manning once more as both Jo and Iris. How she's not gone nuts from doing this is a good question. But this is the last of the Companion Chronicles with Jo Grant in them; it was released in 2011 and everything after has been the acclaimed Third Doctor Adventures box sets. And it doesn't get old at all; Jo and Iris actually make a good team but it's strange that Jo doesn't seem too concerned about getting back home to her family. When this adventure started for this pair it was at the end of Find and Replace when Jo was taken away from Earth during her Christmas shopping, but you wouldn't know it as she seems to be fine with wandering space and time again.

Enter the Doctor, albeit a future version of him, his eighth self who doesn't come into being until 1996 on an ill-fated television movie. He's there looking into the same thing that Jo and Iris have discovered: there are real aliens held captive in Hollywood and they are being used in films against their will. Iris has met this Doctor before, and oddly author Paul Magrs has left that bit of continuity alone (a BBC Books novel called The Scarlet Empress) when he just ignored other Iris adventures with Jo and the third Doctor to re-introduce her in Find and Replace. As for meeting up with this future Doctor, Jo will also meet another future Doctor in years to come, but as the chronometer flies it would have been the same year this was released and no mention made here of that incident (that being an episode of a spin-off series). Big Finish usually try to keep in step with the TV series and all its aspects and spin-offs just to keep things clean but Paul Magrs seems to want to march to his own drum sometimes.

But that's it for Jo Grant. For now. Of course we'll see her again in the future - is anyone really truly gone in a time travel series? But to date that's all the material there is in this line of continuity. We leave Jo wandering in time and space with a different Time Lord, and rejoin her previous alien friend as he continues without her.

NEXT EPISODE: THE TIME WARRIOR