It's 1997 and the eve of the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese. Disgraced former military officer Alistair Lethbridge Stewart has come to Hong Kong to get away from his failures, from a past littered with alien encounters and the disastrous consequences of those failures. Setting up shop as a pub owner, he just wants to fade away. Above Hong Kong a Chinese stealth bomber has crashed and what's left of UNIT are racing against the clock to salvage the wreck and get out before the Handover. But the Doctor has been exiled to Earth by the Time Lords. The TARDIS lands in Hong Kong with a newly regenerated Time Lord at the helm, decades later than he was supposed to. This is not the Earth as he remembers it as it has suffered from the continued alien attacks over the years. And now something else is stirring, feeding off the waves of emotion ramping up to the handover date and the tension in the air as the Handover approaches.
With the Pertwee era now concluded and a new Doctor about to take the helm, it's an interesting time to look at a pair of stories in the Big Finish Doctor Who Unbound range for their take on how things could have been different. I know how much I decry the "parallel universe" cop out but here we have it not as the excuse but for the reason for the story. Imagine what UNIT's track record would have been like without the third Doctor's help. How would they have repelled the Autons? Stopped the Silurians? The Axons? The Master? As it turns out they would have done it anyway but the loss of life and the collateral damage resulting from the Brigadier's usual approach would have been much higher. And given how UNIT would still be covered by the Official Secrets Act there would be no way to reassure the public that the damage and battles were in any way connected to invasions and aliens; it would be down to military incompetence, and the Brigadier would be the one to take the fall for it.
The string of disasters would have encompassed the world peace talks that were being held during the narrative of The Mind of Evil and that would mean the Handover of Hong Kong in 1997 would have had a far different air to it; UNIT soldiers still within Hong Kong after the handover would be seen as an invasion force and repelled accordingly, potentially triggering a war if there hadn't already been one after the conference fell apart.
David Warner's alternate Doctor is still very much the Time Lord we know, although he is not the swash and style of Pertwee at all, meaning the regeneration from the second Doctor would have resulted in a different man altogether. Just as well; Big Finish were not keen to re-cast anyone back in the early days and once an actor had passed away that was it. The whole Unbound line meant being able to do whatever they wanted with the Doctor, and this story is just fantastic to put it in simple terms right from the casting to the careful examination of the UNIT years and how things would have gone without the Doctor. And to hear Nick Courtney again as the Brigadier... always a treat, you can't go wrong with this man in this role.
And how can you do a UNIT (ish) story without the Master? He's here too, and nothing has changed for him, except for him. Turns out he has been captured by the Chinese for his hand in attempting to provoke a war and is forced to regenerate himself when his escape plans go awry.
The big fundamental difference here though is the TARDIS is not as grounded as it was in the televised series, and the Doctor is able to leave Earth at the end of the story. And who better to go with him as his companion than his best friend on the planet?
NEXT EPISODE: MASTERS OF WAR
No comments:
Post a Comment