The Liz Shaw Chronicles

The Big Finish Companion Chronicles range has often been praised for delving further into the perspective of the Doctor’s companions than the series itself would allow; by telling stories from their viewpoints we got to see how they felt about their mysterious time traveller friend and the dangers that would follow them both as they explored time and space. The most intriguing tales hands down came from the Hartnell and Troughton eras as so many of their televised episodes were missing fresh material was welcome, but when it came to the Pertwee years there was just as much demand as the actor himself had passed away and would not be providing any further performances. Actresses Caroline John and Katy Manning dutifully stepped up and reprised their roles from that time as Liz Shaw and Jo Grant respectively, but unfortunately Caroline John herself passed away in 2012. Before passing, though, she returned to the role of Liz Shaw twice on screen at anniversary episodes, once in a spin off video, and five times with Big Finish. It is those five Companion Chronicles I want to look at next as a group.

Released first was The Blue Tooth, a story which saw Liz looking back at her time with the Doctor from some years after they parted ways. She remembers a time when she returned to Cambridge to visit a friend during her time at UNIT – an attempt to return to some semblance of a normal life or at least remind herself of one – only to find that her friend and colleagues of hers have vanished and some strange bits of metal have been found at the scenes of the disappearances. When the Doctor arrives to help her investigate he recognizes some small metallic insects as upgraded versions of Cybermats, and realizes that there are elements of Cyber technology at work left over from their previous invasion attempt.

As it was still early days for the range The Blue Tooth only has Caroline John as a storyteller with Nick Briggs providing Cyber voices, and the feel of it is pretty bare bones compared to later episodes as Big Finish honed their craft more. But it’s an important one to note as the third Doctor never met the Cybermen on screen during his original run, and here we get to hear it happen at last. Caroline John narrates but does drop into impressions of Jon Pertwee from time to time but not every actor is going to be able to ape “their” Doctor to the same level that Fraser Hines does for the second Doctor and this is one example of just that. Personally I feel it would have been better if she had not tried doing it at all. But however it is presented it is still Liz looking back, but not going so far as to be another exit scene replayed; she reflects on when she realized she was going to leave the Doctor but leaves it at that, which is a relief as we don’t need a third version of her departure laying around.

Shadow of the Past was the second release, with Liz returning to UNIT’s top secret Vault after decades of being away. There is something inside the Vault which only Liz is going to be able to deal with as everyone else – the Doctor, the Brigadier, Benton, Yates – are all gone. She encounters a UNIT solider already on the inside and tells him of what she remembers, of a monster from outer space which managed to assume the form of the Doctor and open the planet up for invasion and the bloody battle which followed, and what may still be lurking in the Vault.

Shadow is partly a flashback piece with Liz dropping into storytelling mode when she speaks with Corporal Marshall inside the Vault. A lot of time has passed and Liz knows that there have been several other Doctors by now, all with different faces, but none of them are around this time to help out. In her narrative Liz mentions Captain Mike Yates which would place her flashback moments as somewhere between The Scales of Injustice and Devil Goblins From Neptune (if one takes the latter as the real departure story for Liz). This time it’s Caroline John but with a second actor to take some of the dialogue on as well and loan an additional layer to the story as it unfolds. Both the flashback and the “present” stories move at the same pacing and both resolutions are reached at about the same time. It’s been done before and it’s effective, and it’s just very engaging to hear Liz returning to UNIT so far in the future; her affiliation obviously doesn’t just go away despite not really wanting to be there in the first place, and this would coincide with a reference to her being on UNIT payroll again, specifically on their Moonbase, in an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Exactly what would bring Liz back is not entirely revealed; it may be a grudging sense of duty, it may be that her work finally intersected with UNIT’s agenda at a level of her liking, or it may just be the chance to work without being in the shadow of the Doctor.

Sometime before she rejoins UNIT, though, Liz has a colleague who is working on a time travel device in The Sentinels of the New Dawn, the third release. Liz has not been away from UNIT very long at this point and she feels reluctant to contact the Doctor after she has left him, but she needs his help to determine what is going on. The time experiments are more advanced than expected and they are both flung forward in time from the 70s to 2014 where a radical political movement called New Dawn is attempting to use time travel technology to alter the past and capitalize on the future. New Dawn’s forays into science have not only taken them into the realm of time travel but also into genetics, and they have spawned a hideous winged beast as their guard dog in their future.

Liz hasn’t been away from the Doctor very long at this point and has reservations about asking for his help given that she walked out on him, but her relief at his agreement is palpable. The Doctor has a new assistant at this time who is taking a bit of getting used to as she is not a scientist, and in UNIT affairs the Brigadier is working on security arrangements for the world peace conference which actually places this story between Terror of the Autons and The Mind of Evil. There is no animosity between them at all as they deal with New Dawn as a team once more and the adventure works to provide them with a bit of closure which not every companion gets depending on the nature of their departure. It’s good for Liz, allowing her to move on properly without regrets, and the Doctor returns to his life at UNIT with more purpose in getting the TARDIS fixed; if the humans can create time travel devices he should be able to repair his.

Binary was released next, and takes place before Liz leaves UNIT. She’s thinking about leaving, though; she’s stressed and doesn’t feel like she is living up to her full potential. But there is a problem to work on first; there is a supercomputer in UNIT’s possession which requires investigation. The computer is surrounded by a force field though and when Liz gets too close she is miniaturized and pulled inside the computer along with two UNIT soldiers who also got too close. The computer is capable of communicating with Liz and is sending her messages to help her repair its failing systems, but there are other forces at work urging her to destroy the computer from the inside. The Doctor is on the outside talking her through the experience, but Liz is effectively alone and cut off and must solve this mystery by herself.

Liz on her own is something we never really go to see a lot; even when the Doctor was stranded away from her in Inferno we didn’t get much sense of her being able to do things without him around, scientist or no. Here Liz is resourceful and intuitive and at the start of the story she is pretty bitter about her role at UNIT passing test tube to the Doctor and telling him how brilliant he is. One gets the sense that this is somewhere after Inferno and before Eye of the Giant with Liz saying she is going to leave the Doctor, but as she works on her own and sorts out the computer herself she has some second thoughts.

The final Liz Shaw adventure produced is ironically The Last Post, wherein Liz seeks help from her mother to look into some mysterious deaths. Behind the goings on of the Auton Invasion, the Silurian discovery and the drama of Mars Probe 7 Liz has noticed that prominent people who have died were sent letters accurately telling them the exact time of their death. Everyone who has died was on a committee that Liz’s mother heads but her mother isn’t quick to offer any explanations. The Doctor doesn’t seem particularly engaged either but once a letter arrives for Liz’s mum things make a dramatic switch.

Placement first: this would go before Inferno as there are numerous references to the first three stories of Pertwee’s debut series but only vague forebodings about Inferno . Liz isn’t harbouring any of the resentment of Binary yet as she is still getting to know the Doctor and is constantly impressed by what he can do. This would suggest that it takes some time before Liz really starts to resent her secondary role at UNIT although Giant and Scales try to make a point to saying Liz was only a companion of 8 months before she left. The past of the Last Post does make the first season seem as if everything comes at UNIT fast and furious which makes for a bit of a fan-wank really.

At the conclusion of The Scales of Injustice the Doctor remarks that he never really go to know Liz very well, and I think that is true of the fans as well. Liz was just not there long enough to make enough of an impression to make her a household name in fandom. Big Finish have a way of bringing new life to companions we thought we knew, so their Liz adventures have certainly done that along with the three novels; we’ve gotten to see more of her with the Doctor and more importantly more of her without him so we can get to know her ourselves. Knowing that Caroline John isn’t with us anymore to bring Liz back to life is just plain sad and with the BBC Books range not having much in line for past Doctors these days its hard to say if we will see her in any capacity for a while.

One day, though.

NEXT EPISODE: TERROR OF THE AUTONS

The Devil Goblins From Neptune

It's all go for UNIT right now. A mysterious object breaks up as it enters Earth's atmosphere and is immediately followed by a rash of sudden deaths. The Doctor is targeted for abduction by not one but two forces outside of UNIT. Bolstered by the relative success of the Mars Probe missions the British Rocket Group is sending probes to Neptune. The Brigadier suspects infiltration at the highest levels of UNIT command in Geneva. And there are winged devil goblins flying in the skies overhead.

I'll admit I really had a hard time with the title of this one. It's not like Doctor Who hasn't had its fair share of boner titles like The Happiness Patrol and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy but this one just sounded a bit of a joke when it was announced. To put it into perspective, this was the very first novel to feature a past Doctor published in the BBC Books range in 1997, and those of us who had been reading the Virgin Publishing ranges up to this point were a bit worried that the BBC taking the line back in-house might mean a drop in quality. So when the first title of the new range was announced to be The Devil Goblins From Neptune there was a collective "Oh crap!" as if our worst fears were coming true.

But it's not really bad. It's an interesting place for the range to start, joining the Doctor in the early day of his Earth exile and adding a third story to the season "7b" that followed Inferno. The problem with doing that is there are already two previous entries which were planned to work together - Eye of the Giant and The Scales of Injustice - to commit the most serious offence there is in Doctor Who; the sin that is retcon. As I have said before there is a certain arrogance that comes with this practice, and with the previous two tales under the Virgin banner there was the minor league deal of Yates being introduced before his televised debut, and then the bigger one of writing Liz Shaw out as she never got a farewell scene. I've ranted enough about that already, but here we are with Devil Goblins and Mike Yates has been promoted to Captain now, and Liz is still around after all. The BBC Books editors were under no obligation to honour whatever continuity Virgin created but seeing as a lot of the authors were writing for both lines or were at the very least aware of them they might have worked with what was already there instead of ignoring it. Because lo, Keith Topping and Martin Day pretty much decided they were going to write Liz out too. Here's where one's adherence to continuity requires a little bit of flexibility, and if one really wanted to push it, one would be required to believe that the entire story here in Devil Goblins takes place before Liz's exit scene in Scales. As do some of the next entries to come in the form of Big Finish audios. And not to be satisfied with this folly, the author duo also toss in a couple more continuity carrots: a reference to Professor Rachel Jansen from 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks and a mention of Ian Chesterton which kind of shorts out some of an upcoming novel titled The Face of the Enemy, although the blame for the latter would fall more on the writer of that novel as it was published later.

Devil Goblins does a fair share of globe-trotting with the Doctor and Liz taking up with the UNIT USSR and going to Siberia while the Brigadier goes to Geneva, and everyone ends of at Area 51 itself in Nevada, USA where there's a second batch of aliens being held since the 1950s. It's an established notion that in any drama you can tell a story effectively by splitting the action between several characters, but by the time they were done here Topping and Day had their main cast scattered across the planet trying to solve the mystery of winged aliens called the Waro, who somehow had convinced people in authority to undermine UNIT to ensure a successful invasion. But there's a group of Americans at work here as well - there's UNIT USA and there's also the CIA itself which doesn't like to give any authority away especially to foreigners. The Americans are by and large just put across as blustering arrogant types who look down on everyone else around them, while the Russians are painted as haughty and saddled with a superiority complex like no other. Given that the era this is set in was not exactly one of peace and trust these are not too far off the mark for the opposing superpowers at the time, but even still it gets a bit tedious to read without hoping that someone is going to slap one of the offending parties in the face.

I wouldn't say this was a confusing read but a lot of it just seemed like a bit too much at times, especially when the main aliens, the Waro, are not really developed beyond being beasts and then suddenly there is an entire new species - one which is a natural enemy to them - thrown into the mix for the writers to play with. I found myself wondering when it was going to end more than once.

So Liz has been given departure material twice now and her stay at UNIT still seems short. Big Finish is here to the rescue with a few more Liz tales to enjoy and add to the extended season 7 (or 7b as the case may be) material...

NEXT: THE LIZ SHAW CHRONICLES

The Scales of Injustice

A little boy goes missing. A policewoman starts drawing cave paintings on walls. The Doctor is immediately suspicious and believes that the Silurians have re-emerged. His friends are all tangled up in their own pursuits to assist him this time, with Liz receiving mysterious messages which lead her on a hunt for an organization that doesn't officially exist, and the Brigadier struggling to keep UNIT funded while his marriage falls apart around him. And somewhere else behind it all, there is a sinister presence which is undermining UNIT and reaching deep into the government agencies that support it.

There’s certainly a lot going on in The Scales of Injustice. A lot of it is continuity crap retcon, unfortunately. I don’t believe for one second that Gary Russell woke up and realized he had this story bubbling away inside him screaming to be put on paper for all to read – this reeks of being born of a desire to play around with continuity. Still, Russell is a fan himself and fans love nothing more than playing around with the what-ifs of situations never actually documented; look at social media today and you will see evidence of that all around in the form of “fan theory” in headlines. I still maintain, though, that it takes a certain amount of arrogance to actually decide to be the voice who gets to be heard because you’re one of the inner circle of fandom who happen to be producing the material at the time (this would have been 1996).

First up is the inclusion of the Silurians. Hurrah, great, one of the best monsters of the Pertwee era gets another story. But there’s nothing new here; there is no new take of the Silurians as a species and there are a few spoiler lines dropped about their undersea kin, the Sea Devils, who will appear later on in the series. No, the Silurians here are not even plot devices, they are only being used so Russell can offer up a reason why they look different on screen when they return in 1984’s Warriors of the Deep. The truth of why they look different is when the costumes were made for that serial they were updated with little regard for their original design, but for some reason this needs to be explained as a genetic hiccup in Silurian evolution. This is all tossed out the window anyways as the BBC in their infinite wisdom decided to reissue the novel by using one of the modern series Silurians on the cover in an attempt to draw the fickle masses of newbies into past episodes. They still call humans “apes” and by and large they want us all wiped out so they can take back their planet, except for some more reasonable voices looking to co-exist. And then there’s this bit where they become a mindless invasion mob which…. Yeah nevermind.

There’s another organization out there even more secret than UNIT it seems. They pick up the mess UNIT leaves behind; psychologically damaged soldiers get sent off to the Glasshouse to be rehabilitated and the other stuff goes into the Vault. And this nameless organization is run by some creepy pale young guy with a Cyberman body as they take the spoils of invasions and find ways to adapt them for their own uses. Sounds a lot like something called Torchwood but just years before its time. How many secret organizations can there be out there doing the same job?

The Brigadier has a life outside UNIT it seems: he is married to a woman named Fiona and has a daughter named Kate, and the marriage is not going to survive with him mysteriously away all the time. Fiona doesn’t know what he does, which I find really unlikely given the Brigadier comes from a military family, so she thinks he just works in some office and stays late a lot, which just plain makes her suspicious. Kate, is, of course a retcon piece here but at the time she was not headed to lead UNIT in the new millennium as she is in the new series; she was introduced in a spin off called Downtime as a woman living on her own with no connection to her father, the Brigadier, so of course she needs to be written into the story somewhere. Of course, none of this marriage deal with Fiona matches with the continuity recently created in the Lethbridge Stewart series which ran parallel to season six and gave a detailed account of the Brig’s rise from the ranks. I usually say that the original tales should be minded as far as continuity goes so the Lethbridge Stewart stories by my usual policy should be overlooked, but this time I change my mind. The reason is coming up.

Mike Yates gets promoted to Captain over Benton. That’s not the reason though, it just happens in this one because apparently it needed to. Benton. Mind you, gets a moment where he is faced with the reality that he is going to be overlooked for promotion but he realizes he is not officer material anyways, which is an oddly introspective moment for him. It’s almost like someone was doing John Levene a favour here as he always said it seemed like Benton was just a grunt with no brains when he was playing him.

The biggie of the tale, though, is Liz Shaw’s departure. As it has been said already she did get not get a farewell scene and when you are writing a retcon piece this is just too much to resist. At the time it was pretty much a given that Virgin Publishing’s run of titles for this series was coming to an end so the authors were taking liberties all over the place either out of the aforementioned arrogance or maybe just spite that the BBC Novels might ignore all the work done to keep Doctor Who going between Sylvester McCoy’s finale in 1989 and Paul McGann’s televised debut in 1996. Either way, Liz got a departure here which was not entirely unbelievable; she got tired of being an assistant when she had her own work to do. And then along comes the BBC Books series (we’re going there next) and the first thing they publish is a third Doctor and Liz story with – surprise! – a departure scene for Liz which doesn’t match. Okay so normally I would say Scales is the truth and Gary Russell was right – BUT Gary Russell went on to head up Big Finish for several years and when Liz Shaw got some of her own tales to tell in their Companion Chronicles range they are at odds with Russell’s own continuity here. And if the man can’t respect his own work, should it be accepted as the canon departure tale?

So. My own enjoyment of the novel here is to actually stop reading it at page 257 before the departure scene. Sure that still leaves a lot of drivel but it’s still an episode of Doctor Who to read and add to the series tapestry. But really, Gary, really. 

Incidentally, author Gary Russell opens the novel with a jab at the online Doctor Who fan community of its time (1996), the rec.arts.doctorwho group where the authors of the novels made the folly of getting friendly with the fans and a kind of inner circle mentality developed. Russell had published other novels in this series before this one but someone took exception to the accuracy of the science in one and Russell in turn used his first few pages of Scales to pretty much rub it in everyone's face that he was one of the elite series writers so he could use whatever science he wanted to tell his story. No-one really stopped to realize that the whole premise of Doctor Who is probably scientifically unfounded in the first place so debating any of the science in it at all is pretty useless, but fans do love to argue. Still, it's a bit distressing that an author and then a range editor couldn't just leave it alone and move on like a professional.

NEXT EPISODE: THE DEVIL GOBLINS FROM NEPTUNE

The Eye of the Giant

UNIT receives a mysterious artifact which needs investigating, and the Doctor and Liz are only too keen to see what it is about and where it came from. Their investigation leads them literally over four decades into the past to a remote tropical island where a Hollywood film crew is scouting locations for a new film. The special effects are only too real, however, as the island is found to be overrun by gigantic fauna, and somewhere near a volcanic crater is parked a spaceship. While the Doctor and Liz search for answers to solve the riddle of this island, the Brigadier suddenly has his hands full with UFO sightings and a crisis that could tear apart the future.

The Doctor and Liz get some more innings together with this tale, and Liz actually gets to take a trip through time, albeit without setting foot in the TARDIS. The Doctor manages to lash together his own makeshift time machine which can open portals to the past and allow people to cross over, including, eventually, a UNIT force. The UNIT force has a new face to it: one sergeant Mike Yates. It's another one of those tales where someone was dying to tell an origin story of a character, as Yates will eventually feature as a member of the UNIT "family" through this era but without an actual introduction story, just showing up in an upcoming story, and when he does arrive he will have been promoted to the rank of captain. A few more of the UNIT folks get an intro on page here, notably Corporal Bell and the beleaguered Corporal Osgood, several stories ahead of their televised appearances. Osgood here is not the same Osgood as has been seen in the new era of the series - they're both bumblers but this one is an actual army man not a flaky scientist girl who shows up wearing parts of the Doctor's wardrobe from previous incarnations.

The rest of the cast of the story are unfortunately just caricatures, mostly of Hollywood archetypes like a selfish diva film star, a browbeaten husband who is also her producer, a smarmy director, a swashbuckling leading man who likens everything he does to roles he has played on screen, and for some reason there is a scientist along with them. And there are aliens, too. One is a giant, marooned on Earth a very long time ago and laying dormant. The rest are a species of aquatic creatures who have to troll about in dome-like tanks which sound awfully similar to the Daleks.

It took me a long time to read this one. I just couldn't enjoy it. Christopher Bulis is usually a very good contributor the Doctor Who range but this time he doesn't quite get there. There's just something very ... pulpy about how he writes this one, and it could be deliberate but I somehow doubt it. The references to the Doctor's alternative time line adventure in Inferno are just downright sloppy; this novel was published in 1996 so twenty five years had passed since Inferno was televised and maybe Bulis felt he had to throw in a very clumsy recap of that tale assuming no-one ha watched it since then. After having watched the serial again and then moving to this novel it feels unnecessary and even a bit like reading a children's book.

The Eye of the Giant does stray into the trap of the parallel universe / alternate reality and things just get out of control. The story did not have to go there at all, it could have been told without it. Jumping from aliens confronting each other on a remote island to an alternate future where a movie star is now a goddess just leaves too many things underdeveloped and when the end does come it feels too hasty. Who exactly were these aliens anyways? They're just reduced to throw-away menaces which are suddenly replaced by a bigger threat; you can almost hear the brainstorming session at the pitch for this one being an enthusiastic splutter of "Oh! Oh! And then - we can have underwater aliens in tanks! And they can have a HUGE spaceship underwater and, and - the other spaceship can shoot at it! Oh - and then! And then time can go all funny across the world!"

The Doctor and Liz only get a few extra tales together, it's a shame this was one of them. Maybe things will improve.

NEXT EPISODE: THE SCALES OF INJUSTICE

Inferno

A massive drilling installation in the UK is within hours of penetrating the Earth's crust with the aim to unleash a newly discovered energy source. UNIT is onsite to provide security, and along with the Brigadier and his crew are the Doctor and Liz Shaw. The Doctor has brought the TARDIS console with him to attempt some repairs, but at a critical moment he is slipped sideways into a parallel universe where a dictatorship rules over the world and the project is being run at a scientific labour camp. The drilling is much further ahead on this Earth, and the waste from the drill shaft has turned people into hideous deformed beasts. Without friends or credibility in this world the Doctor is condemned to be executed as a spy, provided the world doesn't end first.

For me Inferno is the most compelling episode of this season; it throws the Doctor into an environment where he is threatened at every turn and faces death minute to minute and it plays with the whole parallel universe concept to such an extent that we see characters we already know to be allies performing as enemies. The Brigadier is counterpointed by a Brigade Leader who is more of a coward backed up by thugs than a man of honour and pride. Liz Shaw in the other dimension is a soldier, not a scientist, although she had entertained the notion in university. UNIT itself does not exist, it is replaced with the Republican Security Force which enforces a regime in power since 1943. Clearly, this is a world where World War II did not end in favour of the allies. Parallel universes are a common science fiction angle usually used wrong with absolutely everything the opposite of what we would know in a regular series; in the Star Trek universe there are episodes across several franchises where characters travel to or from a Dark Mirror universe and we see those contrasts. Here in Doctor Who it's not presented as just one parallel universe but as several possible ones where simple choices have created new realities. Inferno is really the first time we see this in the series but it is not the last by far. In fact, parallel universe could be a handy way to write off everything that happened in the series from 2010 to present; somewhere else, the show has not slid into suckdom.

This particular parallel world, though, inspired some expanded universe fiction; this is the same parallel world where the Brigadier found himself in the spinoff The Schizoid Earth, and it pops up again a little while later in a BBC Novel.

Content aside Inferno has a distinct visual style; it was filmed on what looks like a gasworks or an oil refinery, the gritty location made to look even more desolate in the grainy film. It almost looks as if the world already ended here, so it's fit for an apocalypse. And in the parallel world version as disaster strikes the film is shot through a red filter to give it the look of a doomed volcanic spot. And there are the monsters, too; they're call Primords and have been turned into wolf-like creatures when they came in contact with green goo brought up from the drill shaft. They're not really the best visualized monsters - those fangs are clearly bought from a Hallowe'en shop - but the actors playing them either got coaching or developed some distinct shambling movements to make them a bit creepier.

Inferno is the last shout for Liz Shaw. Boy that year went by fast. And really, despite her being a scientist and being able to help the Doctor out with repairing the TARDIS and clever things, I felt she did not really get her fair shake. The late Caroline John played her very well, it's just a shame that we didn't get a second season with her. What we do have, though, are nine more adventures with Liz in them, some books, some audios. As I said, Caroline John has passed away so while they may write more books about her, we're not going to hear from Liz (literally) again after going through the Big Finish audios she made. Without those Liz would not have actually gotten a departure episode; when the series resumed the following season there was mention of her returning to Cambridge but that was all; the additional material gives us a chance to see how Liz's remaining days with UNIT went, and why she finally did choose to leave the Doctor's side.

NEXT EPISODE: THE EYE OF THE GIANT

The Ambassadors of Death

In high orbit above Earth, Mars Probe 7 has returned from a journey to our neighbouring red planet. The capsule has been in radio silence since it left Mars and the world waits anxiously to hear what has become of the astronauts. Space exploration is old news to the Doctor, but when a mysterious signal comes from the space craft he becomes interested. UNIT's investigation into the returning probe is suddenly hampered by a well organized and well equipped force determined to steal the capsule upon landing. The Doctor suspects there is something deeply amiss, a conspiracy on Earth which could start an interplanetary war.

It is worth noting that by sheer coincidence Ambassadors of Death was broadcast around the same time as the American space mission Apollo 13 was encountering significant difficulty on its mission to land on the moon. The parallels are interesting, and the public felt the same palpable tension that would have been evoked for the fictional public waiting for news from Mars Probe 7. Personally I preferred the dramatization in Doctor Who over another Tom Hanks theatrical dirge when Hollywood decided to have a bash at presenting the plight of the real world crew.

Ambassadors is an interesting one on a lot of levels, mostly to me for how it portrays the British Space Program as on par with or above that of the rest of the world with manned missions to Mars by 1970 and a fully functioning space centre to rival Cape Canaveral (although we never see this location again in the series). Here's where the debate about the UNIT years starts off: visually it looks to be the 1970s, but here I am writing this in 2017 and there has yet to be a manned mission to Mars in my lifetime so it's possible that these adventures were intended to be set in the 1980s, an argument which gets revisited a lot. But the concept of the British Space Program stays alive within Doctor Who right through to present day and who else but UNIT would be trusted with its security.

UNIT has its regular run-ins with the British Army here and there; most of it seems to be born out of some kind of envy or jealousy that a select group of British personnel now answer to the UN in  Geneva rather than to the home office. General Carrington in Ambassadors is definitely not a fan, and back in Spearhead from Space General Scobie may have been an ally but his Auton double seemed to have no problem mustering support against UNIT when it wanted it. This time there are operatives within the Ministry itself with some suspicions about UNIT, in particular about the Doctor and his lack of official existence. UNIT's "family" sees the return of Benton this episode; last time we saw him it was during the Cyberman invasion and here he is again and here he will stay for quite some time.

At seven episodes long Ambassadors gets a bit of a bum rap for being slow in spots, but I don't see that myself. The pace is even throughout, there is a lot for every character to do, with Liz Shaw kidnapped and operating on her own for most of the story (this following a high speed chase in Bessie) while in the company of the mysterious Ambassadors themselves. Despite the fact that these aliens were found on Mars, they are not Martians as we know them (Ice Warriors!) and are more humanoid and depend upon radiation to survive. We only see one without a space suit on, the rest of the time they are hidden behind fogged-up visors and protective suits. But damn they are creepy in some of the shots, notably with the sun behind one as it advances upon a lone UNIT sentry.

This is the third story of this season; it seems to be going by fast despite the fact that aside from Spearhead all the stories are seven episodes long. Liz Shaw is only here for one season but thankfully she like the others has had some chance at extension through the Big Finish ranges, effectively tripling the material with her as the first companion of the Third Doctor. Still to come, though.

THE BLAME GAME

Months into his exile the Doctor is paid a visit by none other than the Monk. His old adversary has heard of his predicament and offers to free him from Earth by taking him away where he can get a new time machine and get on with his travels. The Doctor agrees and leaves with the Monk but Liz has stowed away in the Monk's TARDIS, which soon breaks down itself due to the Doctor's exiled sentence.

Interesting to see the Monk back being all chummy with the Doctor - but you know this isn't genuine. The Doctor must as well but he's desperate to get away from Earth. He pretty much just walks out without thinking to say goodbye to Liz. The Monk doesn't seem to be as vicious as he was in The Black Hole so it's fair odds this is still his original incarnation from the Hartnell years when he was mischievous rather than bloodthirsty and vengeful.

It's the Doctor's character we get an interesting glimpse into here - he has already tried to run off in his own TARDIS once and is trying like hell to get it to work properly but when he gets a concrete opportunity from an old foe he forgets everything and wants out. One wonders if he had a plan to dump the Monk as soon as possible and make off with his TARDIS; not a very Doctor-ly thing to do but hey he's desperate by now. We've all been there.

Continuity wise there are few hints as to where this might be placed but with reference to the Autons and the Silurians but an early line in Ambassadors of Death placing the second and third stories of the season close, this is as good a spot as any really.

NEXT EPISODE: INFERNO

Old Soldiers

Many years into the future, the Brigadier pours a drink and toasts to absent friends. He recalls seeing men fall in service, both at his side and under his command, but in particular one old friend who was transferred to West Germany and then called out for his help. As a loyal friend the Brigadier attended and witnessed an incursion by an enemy that can walk through walls to attack, and when he needed help the Doctor came to his aid. The Brigadier muses that there are few old soldiers in the world, and death is a reminder of why.

Normally I leave the Companion Chronicles like this until a time after a character no longer appears in the series. giving them a bit more perspective on their time with the Doctor and time to get their new lives sorted out. This time, though, I have placed it where it is set in continuity, immediately following the end of Doctor Who and the Silurians. The Doctor is outraged at the Brigadier for blowing up the Silurian habitat and marches out of UNIT with the Brigadier wondering if he would see him again. The call for the Brigadier's help comes soon after and when he finds himself overwhelmed eventually he is surprised to have the Doctor come to his aid. We never really see it on screen and it's not explicitly said here either but there's a forgiveness granted by the Doctor; as the story is told from the Brigadier's perspective there's no insight into when the Doctor gets over what the Brigadier had to do in the line of his duty, but coming to his aid as he did is the sign that he understands what that duty is.

The other reason for doing this tale where I have is because the Brigadier is around a very long time in the series, across all the media and crossing paths with almost every Doctor over time. It's more effective to tell this story closer to the Brigadier's more active days with the Doctor than years and years later... cause it could take that long before I reach his final appearance. This is the only Companion Chronicle that Nicholas Courtney actually does as the Brigadier and he only gets a few more outings with Big Finish as it is. This is a unique character in the whole universe that is Doctor Who; no other has adventured with as many Doctors as the Brigadier, and no other has been called "the Doctor's greatest ally" (words from the Great Intelligence in the Lethbridge Stewart range) not even the infamous companion Sarah Jane Smith. It's a unique friendship stepped in blood and fire, there's no other like it in the series; indeed the Doctor's involvement with UNIT itself carries on long after the Brigadier is gone, and try as it may the new series has yet to really capture that again try as it might with other groups like Torchwood or the tremendously unlikely and boring Paternastor Gang on the new series circa 2010 to 2014.

NEXT EPISODE: THE AMBASSADORS OF DEATH