Etheria

Separated from the TARDIS, the Doctor and Vicki are in the company of a hunter on a distant planet on a quest to reunite with Steven and save him from kidnapping pirates. The area of the planet they must traverse is saturated with a thick fog which causes anyone who breathes it in to hallucinate and sleepwalk. But there's more to this situation, the Doctor believes. Neither he nor Vicki can actually remember arriving here, which makes them wonder who their guide actually is, and where they are actually going.

This is another short trip adventure narrated by Peter Purves without actually stepping into his role as Steven Taylor. Etheria is not even an hour long but certainly feels like it is given the complexity of the script. The short trips range doesn't have much to it beyond straight narration, a very bare bones approach to storytelling although there is incidental music and sound effects to go with it. Purves tells the story well, he's not a struggle to listen to as he goes through the material. And the story itself fits into the format very well; I was wondering as I listened to it and saw the time time creeping towards the 35 minute mark if there was going to be some rushed botched ending, but hurrah there was not! The beginning of the story is only referenced as we join the action somewhere in the middle of the tale - works best for working with a shorter format of story. There are no really big references to series continuity in the story so it's a comfortable enough place to drop it and stretch out that gap between Mission to the Unknown and The Myth Makers to make it feel like more time is passing before the Doctor himself lands on Kembel as the unfortunate Marc Cory did. Another success from Big Finish.

And speaking of success from Big Finish, I listened to this one on my phone in the kitchen while I did dishes today. I'm one of the 30 beta testers for their new app and I have not encountered any major issues with it. Well done to them, I say; so much handier to just download the adventures from their cloud to my phone rather than mess around with file transfers between the computer and the MP3 player, These guys are so good at their job.

NEXT EPISODE: THE BOUNTY OF CERES

Upstairs

The TARDIS arrives in a dark and dusty attic at 10 Downing Street, but within minutes of leaving the ship the Doctor, Steven and Vicki realize there is something wrong: there doesn't seem to be a way out. What's more alarming is the presence of a strange alien fungus working its way through the rooms of the attic, displacing the rooms across time as it goes. Separated from the TARDIS, the crew must confront the alien menace and its servants if they are going to survive.

Upstairs is told mainly from Vicki's point of view this time, with Peter Purves joining in as Steven to complete the dialogue pieces. Given that Vicki remembers this story from quite some time after she left the TARDIS we are not shown her future so it's a safe spot to enjoy this one as it gives nothing away. Steven does not contribute any narrative at all.

Haunted house stories are a mainstay of horror and tension; and those places where nobody goes within their own house are often scarier when we see things living alongside us just separated by a layer of wood and plaster. The only thing scarier than a basement loaded with old junk and shadows is an attic, full of all its creaky floors and piles of boxed up memories people have forgotten. In 1989 the series did its first take on a haunted house story with great success, and Upstairs manages to pull off the same feat evoking a claustrophobic atmosphere inside what one would assume to be a safe place. The tantalizing glimpse the Doctor gets of London out a window early on serves to mock the time travellers' situation, with familiar surroundings just out of reach and the creeping unknown only inches away.

Mat Coward is a new author to the series, and he is obviously no stranger to the regular characters giving them lines we would find perfectly in character. Fresh blood is always a good thing, even if it is on a smaller scale story, and it is also good to have Maureen O'Brien take her turn at playing the Doctor's lines for a change. There are always a lot of regrets that the originals are not around anymore to play their roles, but as no-one lives forever it's an unrealistic wish to have fulfilled, but by having Hartnell's lines performed by those who knew and worked with him it's almost like he is being channeled back into the series.

NEXT EPISODE: ETHERIA

Mission to the Unknown

It's the planet Kembel. Space Security Agent Marc Cory has landed on what he considers the most hostile planet in the galaxy on a mission vital to the survival of the solar system: to determine if the Dalek threat has returned. It has been one thousand years since their last conquest of Earth, but recent sightings of strange craft in the area have caused alarm, and Cory has been sent to investigate. The fears are justified - the Daleks are indeed on Kembel as are representatives of other hostile forces, and their goal is to unite and conquer the solar system. Before Cory can communicate with his own forces, he is discovered by the Daleks and killed, and the Dalek master plan is set to proceed.

A couple of firsts here: first single standalone episode in the entire history of the show, and the only standalone in the classic series, And the first episode not to feature the Doctor or any of his companions. I'm not sure if it was disappointing for audiences back in the day to watch the whole thing and not see the Doctor appear to save Marc Cory or if they got that this was a teaser for something much bigger and better to come. But you can bet that Terry Nation, with dollar signs in his eyes, was thrilled to have the Daleks in their own show for one episode - it would be the sort of thing to make him think that he could sell them to American networks in their own series and make heaps of cash.

The standalone episode was good for the Daleks, really. Let's face facts: The Chase was not exactly the best thing they were ever in, and to see them reduced to stuttering buffoons was not going to make anyone fear them. This time, though, the Dalek menace is back and for the first time it actually wins. They have surrounded themselves with thugs from across the galaxy in this evil alliance but anyone who knows the Daleks would have to be skeptical about how long that might last. But for now here they are together and they're a fantastic bunch of aliens. It's no Mos Eisley cantina I grant you, but they are some of the most interesting aliens on the show so far, each with their own backstory screaming to be fleshed out. And that big tall thing in the back is really interesting to look at.

That is, of course, if you look at stills or Ian Levine's specially commissioned animated version as I did.

Mission to the Unknown is, like so many others of this period, lost. And in this case being only one episode long it's not like we can say "At least we have episode 3," as we did with Galaxy Four. Without the episode to watch my first introduction to it was as a chapter in John Peel's so-so novelization of the big feature The Dalek Master Plan Part 1: Mission to the Unknown and then eventually I got a hold of the audio on the BBC Radio Collection where it was also lumped in with the 12 episode mammoth tale as a prelude. I imagine if it were found today it would probably get its own DVD release with the three surviving episodes of DMP or maybe as a standalone and soak the punters for a few bucks for 25 minutes of  classic footage. Sometimes I am not a big fan of Mr Levine's fandom politics (or any fandom politics for that matter) but I thank him profusely for this service he did by having this work done so it can be enjoyed visually at last. With all the animated inserts in the other DVDs where episodes are missing and restored through an animated episode, this doesn't seem as absurd an idea as it might have in the past.

The next episode would not go right into what was brewing on Kembel; we would be taken to the plains of Asia Minor and see some big wooden horse or something and time would pass on Kembel and the plan would be in full swing. Well with Big Finish that gap can be widened a bit with some extra tales from their line...

NEXT EPISODE: UPSTAIRS

Galaxy Four

The Doctor, Vicki and Steven come to a silent planet which is capable of supporting life but appears to be devoid of any, at least any that is indigenous; they soon find out that they are not the only visitors. Two parties of aliens are also on the planet, both with ships crashed from a firefight they had overhead: the militaristic all female Drahvins, and the tucked reptilian Rills who are served by small utility machines Vicki calls "Chumblies". Both groups are eager to leave as they know the planet is in its last days and will soon break up, but the TARDIS crew are not sure who they trust and who they should help.

Almost every science fiction series goes here eventually; the concept of a female dominated society where men are either not present at all or just there are servants, slaves or decoration. The Drahvins don't have much use for men and see them as a waste of resources, preferring to only keep as many as they need handy for reproduction and killing the rest off. Even within their female ranks there is a division, with their leader, Maaga, being considered a "real" person with more intellect and a better set of menu options at meal time. The rest are still female but they are drones with a limited intelligence, only assigned numbers as names, and they are not treated very well at all - bullied, cajoled, threatened and mocked. Maaga seems amused that the Doctor and Steven are there, but shows no immediate empathy towards Vicki either, probably because she allows herself to be in the company of these men.

The Rills, on the other hand, look like hideous monsters, and are only glimpsed at times rather than seen full on. They are heard, though, with a big booming voice which is somewhat akin to the voice of the Morok computer bank on Xeros. The Rills require a specialized atmosphere to breathe - ammonia gas - and have their workforce of small domed robots which come to be known as Chumblies to do the work for them where they cannot go. And in another science fiction cliches, the ugly scary Rills are actually the benevolent ones here; they just want to get away and not die with the planet. They will even take the Drahvins with them to save them, but Maaga won't let herself move past her revulsion of them, preferring to die than take help from something so hideous.

This isn't a really complicated story, with the TARDIS crew split up here and there and then reuinted after having discovered something important to their plight which they must share. As far as televised continuity goes this is Steven's first full on adventure, having been found in the TARDIS in The Time Meddler unaware of his surroundings, and he and Vicki are set up to squabble here and there which annoys the Doctor.

With Galaxy Four we are not only at the start of the original series third season but also at the start of the era of the missing episodes; this one is four episodes long but all that exists is a six minute clip in episode one, and all of episode three which was found in 2011. Aside from that it's all stills, fragment clips and the full audio. My own first encounter with the adventure was a paperback adaptation published in 1985 written by original script author William Emms, and then the BBC Radio Collection some years later in 2002. I got a hold of the third episode when I bought the special edition DVD of The Aztecs where it was included as a bonus feature, but only finally got round to watching it for this project. I said to my partner when we watched it the other day that it was like brand new Doctor Who to me, and despite the fact that it is 51 years old I still enjoyed it more than anything I saw in the 2012 season.

At the end of the story the TARDIS is once more in flight, and looking at the scanner Vicki muses about what is going on down on a planet they pass. The action switches to that planet where something very sinister is going on indeed...

NEXT EPISODE: MISSION TO THE UNKNOWN

The Suffering

Still new to the TARDIS, Steven is continuing to get used to the notion of time travel. The crew arrive in 1912 and after coming into contact with some fossilized remains Vicki begins to hear voices. The Doctor is suspicious of the remains and while he and Steven investigate Vicki falls further under its thrall and falls in with the Suffragette movement, bringing the influence of the skull to a young woman named Constance. The struggle for women to get the vote has started, but with an alien intelligence with a grudge against men now in the mix, the tide of events begins to take a more deadly turn.

The Suffering does what Doctor Who does very well: drops the crew into history and very shortly introduces another intruder element to the events and brings their influence to bear on the potential outcome. Unlike the machinations of the likes of the Monk, though, the disembodied entity is not aware of its surroundings outside of the unrest and frustration of the women's rights struggle; on its own planet it was cast out by men and carries a fury within and when it sees women being oppressed once again it begins to lash out at men as it comes across them. One could argue that it is not motivated by evil, just out of pain.

This tale was originally presented as a two disc adventure, the first Companion Chronicle to do so before it became a regular feature (for at least two more adventures before the range was suspended and then scaled back from a monthly release). The storytelling is split between two companions - Steven and Vicki as played by Peter Purves and Maureen O'Brien - and unlike other Companion Chronicles is not told long after the companions have left the TARDIS but actually in continuity with the other adventures. It is still told in hindsight, but has Vicki and Steven recording their notions of their most recent adventure on a tape recorder in case anyone ever finds it after they have left. This would have been the first time these two actors were performing together again since the 1960s and they do not miss a beat, finding their characters again with ease. The news that they will be performing together in some further episodes in future under the banner of The Early Adventures is something to look forward to for sure.

Here's my only complaint, because I have to have one I guess: the next episode, Galaxy Four, has a lot of similar themes to it which I will be reviewing next, and like some of the earlier tales where the TARDIS crew meet a new British King each time it feels like a bit of repetition, even if the theme is not as pronounced in one as the other. If the end had been left open for other episodes to be dropped in and create a bit of a buffer it would be great, but it is not done this way; Vicki is determined to cut Steven's hair, leading to the opening scene of the next story...

NEXT EPISODE: GALAXY FOUR

The Empire of Glass

Something odd has happened to the Doctor. Steven and Vicki discovered him missing from the TARDIS and then reappearing with no memory of where he had been, the only clue being a printed invitation in his hand. The TARDIS takes them to Venice in 1609 where a case of mistaken identity lands them as guests of the Doge, and Steven becomes a drinking buddy with Galileo Galilei who is there to show his new telescope to the Doge. But there is more going on in Venice, even more than usual. Strange creatures lurk in the dark streets and a man named Irving Braxiatel wonders where the Doctor has gotten to - for without his presence a galactic arms conference will surely fail.

This one took me a while to get through, mostly because my reading schedule was interrupted by guests and the cover of the book falling off when the humidity made the glue let go after 21 years on the shelf. But on the other side of things I took a while reading it because I wasn't as engaged in this one and didn't really make the time to read it through. I'm not saying it was a bad one, it was loaded with continuity angles but when it got right down to it the plot was just a bit... weak. I think my biggest beef was why it happened in Venice at all, aside from pure self indulgence on the author's part. With a gathering of alien delegates which could attract attention, why would Braxiatel choose Earth at all even if the risk of discovery was minimal, and then choose the one place on Earth where the only telescope in existence was located causing him to have to worry about sabotaging it lest his guests and their spacecraft be seen. Once I had that rattling around in my head it was a bit hard to buy into the rest of the flow of the plot, including the doubecrosses and the motivation of the other aliens present.

As far as the continuity goes Empire of Glass is set just before the second season began without and direct leads into the following broadcast episode, Galaxy Four, but it takes a cue from a 1973 televised episode where the Doctor was taken out of time and met his future selves. I guess Andy Lane wanted to give his own take on where that part of the Doctor's life was so the story opens with him returning, effectively, from the future but with his memories blanked as not to spoil his future for him. So there's the handy memory loss and with that comes the Doctor's uncertainty about the invitation and hilarity (I think this was supposed to read as a comedy actually) ensues. The next bit of continuity fun comes in the form of Braxiatel himself; he's another of the Doctor's people (which is a bit less grand given we only just met the Monk) and the character was being used extensively in appearances and references in the New Adventures range with the seventh Doctor, and these days is a mainstay in two of the Big Finish Productions spinoff series. Once the Doctor and Braxiatel actually meet their exchange is like old boys meeting after a long time (and perhaps it has been a long time) but there are some hints dropped about their manners and resemblance which were either to inply that a) they are family, or b) they are the same person. It is never really made clear which, but odds are there was only so much Andy Lane was allowed to imply here. And I am forced to ask, and not for the first time, why bother if it's not going to go anywhere? Braxiatel's actual origins are from a 1979 televised episode where the name is just dropped in conversation, never really intended for development, but such is the magic of Doctor Who where anything can happen.

There are some other minor references to popular alien species that have so far not been seen on the screen in this continuity (Cybermen and Sontarans to name just two... Ice Warriors to name one more...) but the one that really went clunk for me is the appearance of King James towards the end of the story. The Doctor and Vicki had already had encounters with the same monarch in The Plotters which was set some four years prior to Empire but alas published a year later, and he is not shown as the same sloth that he was in Gareth Roberts' book. More to the point, given how he had lusty desires for Vicki (although he thought she was a boy) it wouldn't be very clever to cross paths with him again. This in itself is not Andy Lane's fault as his book was published first, but just a little point that the editors of the range at the time should have spotted if they wanted to really put their mark on their "new" adventures and keep things tight. Problem is you get too much of this going on and what seemed really clever and cool dissolves into what's knows as a"fan wank".

Empire suffers a bit from an overload of guest stars too; in addition to Galileo the Doctor and company also cross paths with William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe who are both, it seems, acting as spies in the service of King James. I'm not sure how accurate that really is, but here's another wee continuity issue where Shakespeare asks the Doctor if he has a younger brother and describes the fourth Doctor and says he helped him with the writing of Hamlet (which is a reference from the very same episode where Braxiatel is first mentioned). Of course the new series also has the Doctor meeting Shakespeare some 10 years earlier in The Shakespeare Code and the fate of Love's Labour's Won gets a bit of a contradiction from here in Empire but you can't expect the authors to know absolutely everything over the years. And then there's Marlowe - the editors of this range had no problem making a big deal about a historical figure's sexuality as they did with King James, this time having Marlowe lusting after Steven. The question of Steven's sexuality started to come up after this one with fans wondering if Steven somewhere in between the lines got it on with Marlowe. Ah revisionists. What a mess they like to make.

So I resign Empire to the "oh... okay, whatever" file. It's one thing to try and tie a few continuity threads together here and there but to try and create this whole web and overload it with stuff is not really necessary unless Andy Lane knew damn well his plot wasn't enough to fill all the pages. And if that is indeed the case, how about fixing the plot rather than padding it out and burying it under redundant details? Poor show Mr Lane, and poor show whoever was editing at the time.

NEXT EPISODE: THE SUFFERING

The Time Meddler

The TARDIS is a bit of an empty nest with Barbara and Ian gone, but before the Doctor and Vicki can adjust to it just being them, they discover that Steven Taylor managed to escape the collapse of the Mechanoid City and find his way into the TARDIS. Pleased at having a new member of the crew, the Doctor announces that the ship has come to Earth. Steven is skeptical about the claims that the TARDIS is a time machine, and he seems to be onto something when he and Vicki encounter a peasant in what should be the year 1066 with a modern wristwatch. The Doctor senses there is something afoot at the local monastery where a single Monk has taken up residence, and when he investigates he discovers one of his own people deliberately working to change the Earth's past.

With the regular cast reduced in numbers it is an interesting time to delve into a bit of the Doctor's origins, even if they are just in his association with the Monk. Yes, the Monk. There's a lot of "the" going about with the Doctor's people, although how his granddaughter was not "the Susan" is a mystery. The Monk is certainly different from the Doctor; he has no regard for the established history of the world and has made grand plans to change it by changing the outcome of the Battle of Hastings where King Harold died. But as reckless as he seems the Monk is not put across as evil, and does show compassion for the people of Earth around his monastery. And he's playful and jokes with the Doctor about what he is doing, and wants the Doctor to see that this change would be for the better. The Doctor might agree on some level that the different outcome would benefit the people of Earth, but he sticks to the same guns he had when Barbara wanted to change the ways of the Aztecs: no rewriting history, not one line. The Monk is aware of the rules that have been lain down by their people but he simply does not care; he has his own TARDIS (a superior model to the Doctor's) and will go where he likes and do what he likes. Through their interaction though it is obvious that not only are they the same race but they do in fact know each other from their time on their home planet. If the Monk knew Susan we do not know; he does not ask after her and at no time is the name of their species mentioned. It is worth noting that this is the first time we ever see the Doctor meet with a true equal given their shared ancestry.

Steven as a crew member is a change from Ian for sure; whereas Ian was more apt to try and out-logic the Doctor in an argument, Steven is brash and young and hot headed; as a fighter pilot in the wars he has enthusiasm and a degree of training, but not a lot of discipline. He takes a protector role for Vicki right away, not realizing what she has been through already in her travels in the TARDIS. Vicki resents him just showing up and trying to tell her what to do; after all she's now the senior member of the crew and he's the new boy who needs looking after. Whereas the family dynamic of the crew had Ian and Barbara as sort of parent figures, Steven and Vicki are very much the youngsters akin to a brother and sister act now along for the ride with the Doctor. There's a shift in the series with this change of crew; one can almost feel the writing changing up slightly to a more complicated way of telling the story, and some improved production values in the studio. The TARDIS set is still the TARDIS set, but the scenes set atop the cliffs overlooking the sea are made that much more convincing through the use of a projected rolling sky behind the actors, the forest sets are put together with a great deal of care and the threat of a Viking invasion is realized through the inclusion of some stock footage (even if the Vikings we eventually see look nothing like the ones we see rowing the boat).

So with a new companion on board the series closes its' second season, and would return weeks later with new adventures on screen. Meanwhile though, there is more to be enjoyed in the supplemental adventures, first going back to the Virgin Missing Adventures range...

NEXT EPISODE: THE EMPIRE OF GLASS