MR 039: Bang-Bang-a-Boom!

Or the one where Patricia Quinn pushes Sylvester McCoy's face into her bosom.

It's the intergalactic song contest on Dark Space 8! Worlds from across the galaxy are competing, but there's been a murder or two in the background and it's up to our plucky protagonists to stop them before the song contest is ruined!

Yes, this is a sort of spiritual successor to The One Doctor. It's a parody, this time of Star Trek and Eurovision. It's definitely not as good as The One Doctor, though. I am big into Star Trek, but the parody was not as direct as the parody of Doctor Who itself in The One Doctor. It's still VERY good though. It's a shame that we don't do intentionally comedic/ridiculous stories like this anymore.

The Doctor and Mel land on a shuttle carrying the new commander of Dark Space 8, only it blows up just in time for them to get pulled onto the station via transmat. The Doctor gets mistaken for the commander and it goes from there. It's quite entertaining to hear the Doctor playing commander on this Star Trek type space station. He gives orders and talks to the principal crew, the Doctor and the scientist while investigating a series of murders.

The main story here is that two of the competitors in the song contest are Angvia and Gholos, a gestalt entity, two species that have hated each other and fought for years. There's a peace conferance going on, but in the meantime the song contest is a symbol of that peace.

However, there's a little secret. The song contest is actually the REAL peace conference. The arbiter of the song contest is the arbiter of the peace conference, all of it conducted psychically and subconsciously so that the singers don't know that they're negotiating.

It's mostly just a fun little romp with much hijinks and murders along the way. I particularly enjoy the parodies of Star Trek where the commander gets killed in an appropriately Star trek episode fashion, leading to the Doctor becoming the new commander.

The space station scientist and doctor are actually quite incompetent at their jobs even though they look and sound quite profession. In fact the doctor gives stardate logs of what's happening. But she is not very good. She can't revive someone who's just got a bump on the head and doesn't know what smelling salts are. And she says "I feel so helpless" a lot. It turns out that she stowed away and just said she was a doctor because she wanted to live the life of a star trek doctor, running down corridors with a tricorder in hand and saving people. But she actually got a lot of people killed along the way.

As for the scientist, he was drunk the whole time. Whenever anyone asked him something, he just said whatever random crap popped into his head. Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow indeed. He, doubtless got a lot of people killed as well.

As for the eurovision parodies, we get some fun parodies of the announcers and voting when the Ice Warriors cast their vote for Mars' delegation. But the actual performances sure are... something. There's a pop star from Earth named Nicky Newman who has stage freight and has a bomb that goes off when he's stressed inside of him (true story) so the Doctor goes on for him instead. Guess what he plays, and then wins the whole contest with?

The murderer is revealed to be the translator to the gestalt entity trying to sabotage the peace conference. The idea of a translator being the only one who understands what someone is saying and thus manipulating them and lying about what they say is a fun idea.

I also particularly enjoyed the theme starting and then cutting off when Mel says it was too easy to just wrap up. Speaking of which, I find it interesting that both parody/comedic stories use Mel as the companion. Presumably Gareth Roberts thought she contributed well to comedy, which was a good call, she does. Definitely a fun romp, not as good as The One Doctor, but still a good time. And a reminder of what we could have had if they kept up the comedy stories.