We return to The Early Adventures for The Crash of the UK-201. On this occasion we get a Doctor-lite story as Vicki has been thrown back into her own past as she’s materialised in her younger self on the UK-201, the day it crashed on the planet where she eventually met the Doctor. Naturally she sees this as an opportunity to save her father but she will realise that there’s a cost to changing history and that she can never live a perfect life.

This is up there as one of the worst experiences a companion has ever gone through, to be given a second chance at saving a loved one’s life only to go through all the complications of altering history and then realtering them until you lose those you care about forever and have no choice but to go back to your old life. It’s quite a harrowing experience to which Maureen O’Brien rises to the occasion in giving easily her best work as Vicki. Honestly this was the story that made me appreciate Vicki as a character, for a long time I’d always viewed her as a rushed replacement for the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan who had only left in the prior story, but The Crash of the UK-201 was a tremendous showcase for Vicki and really changed my opinion of her.

It seems odd saying this but Jonathan Morris is one of the few Doctor Who writers who really experiments with the effects of time travel, it’s often his gimmick when he’s at the writing helm and it works more often than not as is the case of this story. He would certainly be a great addition to the show if he ever made the jump to televised writing for Doctor Who.

THIS STORY IS PERFECT ITS JUST PERFECT EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS PERFECT VICKI IS PERECT THIS STORY IS A 100% RECOMMENDATION

An interesting character tale for Vicki. Think of it as a combination of “Father’s Day” and “Turn Left”, with her in the lead.

After something goes wrong in the Tardis, Vicki wakes up on the UK-201. The spaceship that she crashed on before she met the Doctor. She still has all her knowledge from after that time, so she tries to stop it.

This is an amazing premise. Vicki has grown very subtly throughout her adventures and now has a chance to use all she’s learned to save her own father. But doing so will erase all the adventures she’s had in the first place.

Steven is also here for some reason. But he gets captured. Steven capture counter this season: 8 in 11 stories. Jeez man. Get a new hobby. Besides being someone for Vicki to talk to, he has a pretty big role in saving the ship. More on that later.

After the ship is saved, we spend a lot of time on Vicki’s alternate life. She lives with her father, gets married, has two daughters. Yet she also has several big tragedies in her life. Mostly losses among the aforementioned loved ones.

It’s intriguing to see this alternate life play out. It feels real. Steven sometimes pops up at random moments in her life. He’s a sort of audience surrogate. A reminder of what could’ve been, had the ship originally crashed.

Not all is well, though. As time goes on in this alternate timeline, monsters come to feed on the paradox energy. Like the last two stories, this foe feels really unnecessary. These stories keep adding a monster to an external threat that doesn’t need one. Anyway, because of the monsters, Steven and Vicki figure out that this timeline is wrong. We zoom back and forth through Vicki’s life to see where she could’ve made alternative choices, until we end back on the ship, where Vicki knows that the crash must happen.

I think this way to get back to the original timeline is pretty weak. Vicki never makes a conscious decision to go back. It is never a choice for one timeline over the other. It’s a necessity because of arbitrary monsters. It’s a run-of-the-mill threat.

And that run-of-the mill carries over in the way the story handles its climax. Vicki has to, in essence, kill her own father and all people aboard. But this is never shown as an emotional resolution, no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. It is treated as a time puzzle. How do we make sure the right future happens?

And this shouldn’t be the focus! This is not some standard adventure! This is Vicki’s personal timeline. This is one of the biggest shifts that has ever happened in her life! Why are we treating this like your average monster-of-the-week shenanigans. Vicki not only loses her father here, but the entire potential future she could have had. Her new family. Her children. Yet that gets no attention. We just go running, gasping and problem-solving, like any other story. Come on! That can be done better!

Look back at how Vicki is presented this season. We know the basics. She’s from the future, is a bit of a wiz-kid and is pretty stubborn. Okay. Good. Now the next level. What are the relations to the characters around her?

Vicki seems to care a great deal about the people around her. She considers the tardis crew her family. She gets scared at the thought of Ian and Barbara leaving, as this would break her family apart again (The Fifth Traveller and 1963). Her and the doctor have had a parent-child relationship from the moment they met in the Rescue. Steven has quickly gotten the role of an older brother, as mentioned throughout this range. She has lost everything, but built a new family from the ground up. And she has shown a fear of being left behind on several occasions, because it has happened before.

And we are now in that original moment. The moment Vicki got left behind for the first time. This is Vicki, in a sense, confronting her biggest fear, so she can reach her new family. This is an absolute peak for her character. And it is played straight. No emotion. Facts and running. That’s blasphemy.

That’s not even mentioning Steven, who is also here for some reason. With a bigger role than Vicki herself. He is the one that “safely” crashes the ship and corrects the timeline. Shouldn’t that be Vicki’s job? Isn’t this her story? Shouldn’t she have the big moments where it all goes the way it’s supposed to?

And so the timeline is restored and Vicki is back in the tardis. The end.

This story is just dry. It has an amazing premise and it does play with it a little. That’s fun to see. But it fails to emotionally commit to what it is presenting. It is a lot like the short trip “1963” in that sense. It brings the characters to a peak of emotional confrontation, but decides to play it stoic for absolutely no reason. While it does clever things, the absolute wrecking of the emotional climax drags it down too much for me to consider this “good”. A shame.