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