The Sontaran Experiment

Abandoned after the solar flares that drove humanity away, the Earth is a quiet place. Basic life has returned and proliferated but something else has come as well; a lone Sontaran named Styre has come to Earth and set up a series of tortures designed to learn how to best kill humans before going to war with them. He has lured a ship of humans from another colony to the planet and is working through them when the Doctor, Sarah and Harry arrive in advance of the people of Nerva to service the transmat beam reception point. Sarah is caught up in Styre's nightmarish experiments leaving the Doctor and Harry to risk their lives against Styre and put an end to his plans.

So the Sontarans are back, and it's Sarah's second run-in with them after the events of The Time Warrior. The bit where she is dragged to his spaceship by his hunter robot is pure gold when he emerges and she gasps "Lynx!" in utter horror. It's clearly not the same Sontaran - the face is slightly different from before as well as its skin tone, but there's the same murderous intent and callous disregard for life. The Sontarans are an off bunch that way; they're looking to wage war and kill but they seem to want to make it a good fight and maintain their honour instead of just blasting away at opponents til there is nothing left. In the end of course they will be happy if they are the only ones left standing so long as their honour is maintained. The Doctor goes hand to hand against the Sontaran again, which isn't really the smartest move considering how he was nearly killed by one before, but it's a gamble he is willing to take to save everyone.

Production values are interesting on this one: it's entirely shot on video on location so it has that kind of "live" look to it. I go back and forth on how effective this is, although the decision was made for budget reasons and not for artistic value. I found though with DVDs made in the UK when played back here in North America on multiregion players the picture quality gets a regrade that looks like film, and brings the whole thing a more theatrical look. I would watch this show and a few others all shot on video this way until just recently when bluray boxed set of classic seasons started coming out.

The extreme future history of Doctor Who at this point is still a bit of a continuity mess; the second human empire is flourishing after Earth has been abandoned and the GalSec colonists who Styre is killing are nothing but resentful of the Nerva bunch who they think are going to try and take over once they wake up. This is all still somewhere before the events of The Ark where we actually see the planet burn up and be gone forever, but in total it's the second of five times in the series that Earth will be seen to die by fire. Trying to make any sense of that is difficult, although there are a couple places where it could overlap, but it would seem that The Ark in Space and Sontaran Experiment would be the first time it happens. How humanity is totally rebuilt and Earth brought to ruin by pollution all over again is a mystery. But how big is the human empire now and how could Earth possibly become the centre of it all over again after being left for dead? The infrastructure reinvestment alone would bankrupt an economy. There's no real roadmap to the future history of Doctor Who and series writers at the time were not as into keeping continuity going as they are today, so this becomes one of the first big grey areas right up there with the Cyberwars.

But if you want a real headache, try sorting out the Dalek continuity...

NEXT EPISODE : GENESIS OF THE DALEKS

The Ark in Space

The TARDIS materializes in what seems to be a deserted space station hanging dead in space. One the Doctor manages to bring the systems back online, though, Sarah is caught up in an automated process which puts her into a cryogenic chamber along with the survivors of the human race. Earth has been devastated by a solar holocaust and the station - Space Beacon Nerva - as been used as a sleep chamber for a chosen group of humans to wait out the solar flares and return to Earth. But sometime during their long sleep the humans were visited by the wasp-like Wirrn, and the station is now a breeding ground for the monsters with the sleeping humans a ready made source of food. With only a few revived humans to help him, the Doctor has to find a way to stop the Wirrn before they overrun the station and move on to claim Earth.

The Ark in Space starts off as a tremendously claustrophobic story with the TARDIS crew emerging into an airless confined space within Nerva; with the power cut by the Wirrn to keep the humans from being revived the station is in darkness with some creepy shadows, but when light does come back it is glaring and harsh. The story later has one of the show's  most iconic visuals ever with a sweeping view of space along the ark's corridors and the towering height of the cyrogenic chambers seeming to stretch far into the vertical distance. And it was all gleaming space age clean sterile white, along with the sharp uniforms worn by the crew (and Sarah after she was processed). The future was always bright and shiny in the 70s.

 The episode was set well over 10,000 years into the future, the TARDIS accidentally flung for into the future by Harry touching part of the console, and it parallels the William Hartnell episode The Ark in its theme of the human race surviving Earth's destruction, although here the story is taking place far too early in time and the Earth is not being consumed by the fireball of the sun, just slightly toasted by the flares. This would be a loose start to the future history stories of Doctor Who with the humans fleeing Earth and striking out across the stars, although the series had already touched on the colonization era of humanity with stories such as Colony in Space, The Mutants, Frontier in Space and Death to the Daleks, although on the time scale indicated here these events would be long past by the time of the solar flares.

Series continuity where the future was concerned wasn't really on anyone's mind back then it seems, and in a way it didn't really matter as the future history episodes were spread out and often interspersed between historical and contemporary time episodes. To cling to it too much might have limited some of the creative flow of the scripts, although I will forever be trying to sort them into some kind of an order. The new series when it returned in 2005 made a much better go of keeping things in line, although some of those episodes would suggest stories like The Ark in Space would take place even further in the future to allow room for the new series stories.

Character continuity, though, is observed well and although it's only his second full story, Tom Baker is the Doctor through and through. His manner remains that of a fool at times, although it is obvious he is not. His impatience with the humans he is trying to protect comes through often, mostly with Harry, but his determination to stop the Wirrn from consuming the whole species doesn't waver.

The Wirrn are a fantastic monster; like some wasp species they lay eggs in their prey so there is food ready when they emerge, which is the plan for the sleepers on Nerva. The Wirrn have the capability to absorb knowledge from the creatures they consume, and now having happened upon the sleeping humans they are poised to overnight become a technologically advanced race without having to do any of the heavy lifting. Unfortunately they are not seen again in the series as an enemy but do get a return treatment a few times in future Big Finish episodes.

But with the surviving humans either asleep in a space station or so far out in space they have forgotten they came from Earth, what has happened to the planet below?

NEXT EPISODE : THE SONTARAN EXPERIMENT

Robot

The Doctor has regenerated again, right before the eyes of Sarah Jane Smith and the Brigadier. The new man before them is not at all like the one they knew before - he seems to take things far less seriously than he used to and is more interested in the obscure than the obvious. While he is recovering, though, top secret plans for making a highly classified weapon are stolen by an entity that seems unstoppable, but is in reality a weapon itself - a huge robot under the control of a scientific elite called  The Scientific Reform Society.  The new scientific regime believe that they have the right to rule the world due to their intellectual advantages over everyone else, and with the Robot, a disintegration weapon and a file full of nuclear codes they are set to blackmail the world. But they never counted on the Doctor.

A new Doctor and a whole new feel to the series! Tom Baker is a huge departure from the more serious tones of Jon Pertwee's Doctor, although despite some of the comic carrying on that he does he is still very much the Doctor through and through. Here is where we see the debut of the insanely long scarf that most people associate with the Doctor, as well as the hat and the big grinning mouth full of teeth and the mad curly hair. This is by far the most iconic of the Doctors of the classic series. And of course the Doctor needs his companions, so here is Sarah Jane Smith at his side to form the most famous companion duo ever. Their chemistry is immediate; he is a new Doctor but they are still best friends right away, and if Sarah accepts him, we will too.

The Brigadier never knew when he was well off now there's a new Doctor - a third for him. But as the third was starting to spend more and more time away from Earth and his role within UNIT, this Doctor is obviously not going to hang around anymore. And equally perplexed by the Doctor is Surgeon Lt Harry Sullivan, finally in the flesh, as a semi unwilling new companion in the TARDIS. As far as televised adventures go his name was mentioned in Planet of the Spiders but the retcon magic of the series made his "new" first appearance happen back in The Face of the Enemy.

Gotta love that Hilda Winters, the head of the SRS. Geez what a cold bitch, but a fanatical one at the same time. The hysterical shouting and podium thumping from her speech at the SRS meeting are the stuff of which maniacs are made. You kinda want to see someone just slap her to put her in her place.

And that Robot. A huge machine, the likes of which we don't always get to see on the show due to its sheer size. But wow what a creation and such an intimidating voice. It's unlikely and somewhat cliche attachment to Sarah evokes King Kong memories, but all for good purposes in the end.

This is just what the series needs here is a fresh start - not that Pertwee was in any way a tired Doctor but the series had gotten so rooted on Earth with the Doctor's exile that it didn't feel like an adventure show so much as it did a crackpot scientist and his crazy sometimes working time machine. With a new version of the Time Lord at the controls, the TARDIS could end up anywhere.

And oh does it ever...

NEXT EPISODE : THE ARK IN SPACE

The Rings of Ikiria

Mysterious crop circles have appeared in Britain and upon investigation, UNIT and the Doctor meet a beautiful female alien named Ikiria, who offers the world golden rings of friendship. But all that glitters and all that, and Mike Yates finds himself the only person who has not fallen under Ikiria's spell.  With the Doctor missing, and being hunted and betrayed by even the Brigadier, Yates has to save the world himself this time.

Okay so not really huge new ground for Doctor Who as we have seen the story of someone beautiful offering friendship with an ulterior motive before (hello Claws of Axos) and Big Finish would use this idea again to an extent in Storm of the Horofax (this one was written first) but the real story here is Mike Yates himself. The tale happens somewhere before Jo Grant joins the UNIT family so the Doctor is operating without an assistant, although Mike is telling it from somewhere else in his own future, sounding wistful and sad that what he considered his home and family were no longer there anymore.

Filling in the blanks in Yates' backstory is something that has given us as fans some interesting stuff to work with, even if that total only amounts to three stories (this, Scales of Injustice and Eye of the Giant) but as he just appears out of nowhere in Terror of the Autons it's all good stuff. Big Finish have taken a great deal of time to include Yates in some of their latest work in the era of the third Doctor, so the mystery man feels like more of a team player. This makes his eventual fall from grace pack a lot more of a punch, and his reflecting upon his UNIT days seem much sadder.

Still, no-one ever really leaves Doctor Who. Yates will be back eventually, but not for a while still.

Meanwhile the Doctor...

NEXT EPISODE : ROBOT

The Magician's Oath

Some strange weather patterns attract the attention of UNIT and the Doctor; out of nowhere there are patches of London covered with frost and snow. The Doctor notices strange energy fluctuations that coincide with the weather shifts, and while he researches, Mike Yates and Jo Grant go out looking for trouble. They find it in the form of a charismatic magician who goes by Diamond Jack, and Jack is not a normal trickster; his illusions and tricks leave people cold, and others become attached to his mind. With his unspoken love for Jo burning within him, is Mike going to make the right decision when the time comes?

Mike Yates was actually the second UNIT officer to get the Companion Chronicles treatment, leaving Benton to the end, but in this continuity his stories have to wait until after the Doctor's regeneration as they are told in hindsight. In this instance, Mike looks back at the encounter with Diamond Jack after a long time away from UNIT, long after his nervous breakdown and his attempt to meditate his way back to stable mental health. In the audio extras actor Richard Franklin rightly points out that Yates really has been the only character to be shown to have this happen to him, although revisionists and retconners have now included Dodo Chaplet in that number (Who Killed Kennedy). Regardless of how limited the number of PTSD sufferers there are in Doctor Who (and really, it's a surprise there are not more considering the things they see) it is always interesting to see the characters in more than just their scripted aspects, to see a bit deeper behind what they say and do on the screen.

There's also that bit about Mike and Jo and their on again off again relationship. Over the last several adventures across all media it has been hinted at here and there, they have gone on - or tried to go on - dates and there's been a quick snog here and there, but the idea was quietly dropped by the television production team with the reasons only to be guessed at by fans, and when Jo decides to marry Cliff Jones after a few hours of knowing him there's not really any consideration for Mike Yates and how he might react. Years later in The Magician's Oath it is obvious that Mike was hurt by the collapse of the relationship, or worse by it's casual decline into nothingness, and he's pretty much just a lonely old man now, turning up at UNIT functions and talking the ear off younger privates about the old days.

And, of course, about the Doctor.

Mike was and is still in awe of the Doctor and he carries the guilt of his betrayal of his friend in Invasion of the Dinosaurs right into his old age. The story is written to take place around the time the Doctor has become involved with UNIT once more in the new series, and Mike makes a last hopeful ask of the private he speaks with, that should he meet the Doctor that he say hello from Captain Mike Yates. Yates hasn't been a captain since forever; we never saw him again in the televised series after Planet of the Spiders but we do see UNIT for a while, and he's not there anymore.

The Magician's Oath is a very different story in the range; the whole threat posed by Diamond Jack is really all background to the real story, which is that of Mike Yates' depression and guilt, and how he has not really ever recovered from his UNIT days. Intentional comment on soldiers and PTSD? Maybe. It's certainly a relevant issue these days. And it's not like Doctor Who never had its moments with political issues and commentaries. Unlike the third (or is it fourth?) wave feminism that has led to stunt casting of the current series, this isn't a big hammer over the head diatribe, it's just there plain for all to see that Mike Yates, former career officer at UNIT, is a broken man, and his struggle for wellness never ended with a simple stay at a spider-infested monastery.

NEXT EPISODE: THE RINGS OF IKIRIA

Masters of War

Continuing their adventures together, the Doctor and the Brigadier land on a world devastated by a nuclear war; the soil is barren and at first glimpse the planet seems to be totally dead. But there is life in the ashes; the Thal people live under the protection of the machine-like Daleks, who in turn are awaiting the return of their creator, a man named Davros. This is far from what the Doctor knows of the Daleks from his previous adventure with them - they are killers, they have no love for the Thals at all so this must all be a big mistake. But when Davros does return from his mission, the truth behind matters is revealed and the Doctor doesn't know whose side to be on.

It's a bit unusual with this limited series to create a continuity within itself with the Doctor and the Brigadier having left Earth together and now making up a TARDIS team. After all there are only eight of these stories and their purpose seemed more to look at how things could have been different at pivotal moments rather than go off on a big tangent. But then again, things are very different in this story for the antagonists as well, mainly for Davros.

Chronologically Davros is introduced much sooner this way than he would be if I were only looking at televised episodes; here in Masters of War his origins and his role as Dalek creator are not touched on; it is assumed that the listener at this point would know who Davros was and how his backstory played out. As with the Unbound series itself, Davros and his story are given a bit of the old "what if" treatment and this is the result: a double length adventure (why wouldn't it be considering it's a Dalek story) with a lot of the old rules tossed out the window. Probably best enjoyed after getting through the entire regular series, though, or at least after Davros shows up in it, then the "what if" factor here will be more obvious.

Delving too far into that will only serve as a spoiler, though, so let's just look at how well the Brigadier and this alternative Doctor played by David Warner work together as a team. The Brig, it has been argued, would not work so well as a companion with the Doctor on a regular basis because his strength lies not only in his allegiance to the Doctor but his skills as a leader of an army. Take that away and the Brig has a bit less of a purpose, unless of course he were a retired man and no longer had his military duties. Doesn't take long for him to find himself a new army though once this tale gets rolling, and then he's the Brigadier we all knew in his heyday. This is, however, where this travelling duo stop although the alternative Doctor does make a return eventually in the future. Can't say where though. More spoilers.

NEXT EPISODE: THE MAGICIAN'S OATH

Sympathy for the Devil

What if the Doctor arrived too late?

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

Planet of the Spiders

Jo Grant has sent the Doctor a package from the depths of the Amazon jungle: the blue sapphire from Metebelis III which was her wedding gift. The crystal is making the natives nervous and she has to get rid or the entire expedition she and her husband, Cliff, are on will be off. But once back in the Doctor's hands the crystal becomes the object of desire of another party - the giant spiders (known as the Eight Legs) of Metebelis III. The spiders have created a bridgehead at a meditation centre where Mike Yates is attempting to recover from his own mental breakdown, and a group of men led by the angry and scheming Lupton become the human agents of the spiders. In his fight to keep the crystal out of the hands of his enemies, the Doctor will journey back to Metebelis III and engage in a confrontation that will cost him his life.

Does anyone actually like spiders? I'm not a particular fan myself but I'm not a full on arachnaphobe either. Still my own experiences with spiders are with the smaller ones and the odd big brown one in my garden, and not with giant ones that like to leap on people's backs. Friends of mine have said that this story was the one that stoked their lifelong dislike of the creatures, so hurrah for Doctor Who for using wobbly rubber props to strike fear into hearts! The rationale behind these giants is the conditions on Metebelis III would have allowed for their mutation into bigger creatures and for accelerated brain development, allowing them to evolve and take control of the human colonists there and enslave them. And eat the odd one. So now it's not just spiders overrunning the place, it's organized spiders with a Queen running the show, and someone else called the Great One (all praise to the Great One) running everything else.

Poor Yates; here he is trying to get his head back where it should be and there's another alien threat getting in the way. But disgraced and discarded by UNIT, he can hardly show up at the door and tell them what he has found. Good thing he has a good rapport with Sarah Jane Smith, and he can get her to tell UNIT for him. It's strange how their friendship developed like this; must be some background stories we aren't aware of. Is there a relationship here? Has Mike transferred his feelings for Jo onto Sarah? Is Sarah impressed by Mike's flashy sports car (must have been a generous severance package from UNIT) or does she just feel for him now that she has seen what adventuring with the Doctor can be like. Mike isn't exactly in PTSD land though, at least not in the sense of how it is perceived today; he's been sent packing and left to his own devices without a proper care plan, just meditation as his own attempt to get things right for himself.

The Doctor isn't aware of his own imminent regeneration at all, no matter how much retconning is done on this one they can't make it happen. There's no sense of finality in the background until the last two episodes; firstly when the Doctor realizes that going into the cave of the Great One (a massive HUGE spider - all praise to the Great One) will irradiate him beyond hope of recovery, and the second most obvious and least subtle is when he meets fellow Time Lord K'anpo Ripoche who regenerates himself just because he is old, much like the Doctor did in The Tenth Planet. K'anpo's regeneration is different though; there is a projection of his future self running around, a Tibetan monk named Cho-je, and the regeneration process absorbs Cho-je into K'anpo. Exactly why K'anpo is there though, is never really explained, unless he was there to guide the Doctor as he had in their old days on Gallifrey when he lived up the hill behind the Doctor's house.

That part is what's referred to as a fan-wank.

I often wonder how well Lupton would have fared without the aid of the spiders. He's not at the retreat to gain any kind of peace of mind, he's a bitter man there to focus his fury at the world and get revenge on the people who pushed him out of his job. That's a dangerous enough motivation right there but without a weapon of sorts (in America this man would just go to the gun shoppe and mow down kindergarteners as his outlet) Lupton would have been pretty ineffective and would have died angrily under the care of the NHS. The involvement with the spiders, though, shows that Lupton can learn fast and he has some capacity for learning to use his own latent mental powers. Who knows, maybe he might have become a credible threat over time. But he's a good driver and pilot it seems - stealing cars and helicopters and boats in a dreadfully long chase scene which eats up most of the second episode, fun as it is.

Despite this being the last outing for the third Doctor, the episode doesn't get to wallow in it and maintains a sense of fun the whole time even as things get desperate and nasty. Benton making jokes about hairdressing. The Brigadier's past love, Doris, getting a mention much to the Doctor's amusement. It's only once the Doctor emerges from the TARDIS in the last few minutes of the final episode that it becomes alarmingly evident that it's over for him, and it will be time to say goodbye to the third Doctor. He goes out with dignity right to the end, and with the Brigadier and Sarah watching, he regenerates.

NEXT EPISODE: SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

Island of Death

Jeremy Fitzoliver has decided to chuck it all and has left Metropolitan magazine to join a new group all about brotherhood and a new way of life. Sarah knows a cult when she sees one and sets about investigating what they are all about, not buying the spiritual well being line for a second. Sarah discovers that the figure at the heart of this is an insectoid creature named the Skang; a creature that the Doctor recognizes as not being of this world. The cult picks up and leaves to join members from around the world, with the Doctor, Sarah and the Brigadier following behind to delve into the mystery, and in doing so they uncover an alien menace set to take over the world.

I get the feeling that Barry Letts might have submitted this idea for BBC Radio as he did previously with The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N Space, or maybe he was just on a roll when he picked up the pen again. All the elements are there from the previous stories; Sarah not exactly being a full time companion for the Doctor yet, a reduced UNIT presence with the Brigadier operating away from his usual support base, and Jeremy Fitzoliver being generally frustrating (although this time we don't actually have to listen to his wheedling). The Doctor is still maintaining his link with UNIT as well even though he has the TARDIS back (sort of; there's a waste of time chapter where it doesn't function) and could leave Earth anytime, and as with the other stories he is found engrossed in his own experiments when the action starts to move.

But another cult story! Actually this was written before the Big Finish audio Transcendence of Ephros where the Doctor and Jo tried to make a suicide cult change their ways, and here the cult is borne of the human fascination with enlightenment through spiritual well being. All they have to do to get the ball rolling is to enjoy some of the dangerous Kool Aid on offer and then Mother Hilda will show them the way. The way, is, mind you, to surrender your human identity and become a Skang yourself if you are into insects. The picture is pretty enough on the island - it's literally a paradise but is it all just an elaborate fraud? Just as with Paradise of Death there's a strong reliance on illusion, and an easy way to see through it.

You know what I don't like most about this one? It feels so.... damn.... long. The journey by sea to the Island from Bombay crawls on for pages and pages with Sarah treating it like a luxury cruise and sunbathing in her bikini and the Brigadier annoyed that he's not in control of the situation. I could only take it a chapter at a time and for that reason it took me a while to get through the book. I suppose, though, that as most of the episodes produced for television under Letts were six part adventures he wouldn't have been too concerned about the length of the sequences; he may have been going for epic status on this one. But I kinda doubt it. And he just couldn't help but drop another of the old foreshadowing references to the Doctor's eventual regeneration.

And that's next.

NEXT EPISODE: PLANET OF THE SPIDERS