(Continuing my review of the Beyond War Games box set...)

In Wrath of the Ice Warriors, the TARDIS arrives in Scotland where the Doctor meets up with Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge Stewart, played brilliantly by Jon Culshaw. The story slots in nicely between The Web of Fear and Spearhead from Space, so the Brigadier is still relatively young. Now, entirely by coincidence, also for Christmas, I was gifted another Big Finish adventure set in Scotland and featuring Culshaw as the Brigadier, this time paired with Sylvester McCoy’s 7th Doctor. However, in The Grey Man of the Mountain, Lethbridge-Stewart is an older, wiser man at the end of his career post Battlefield. It was nice to contrast Culshaw’s portrayal of the same man at different times in his life. I’d never realised before, how much thought Culshaw puts into his vocal mimicry; it’s not just a party-trick he does with his voice, the man really is a genius. Listening to him talking (as himself) in the extras, it’s clear that Jon Culshaw feels a responsibility to get his performance right and honour Nicholas Courtney’s legacy. He succeeds in that admirably. Even though they are not designed that way, I’d recommend listening to Wrath of the Ice Warriors and The Grey Man of the Mountain back to back.

By the way, someone else who impressed me with their vocal dexterity in Wrath of the Ice Warriors was Katy Manning. I’d quite forgotten seeing her name on the box, and I actually listened to her performance in the story without realising it was her. Mind you, Katy’s impression of Omega in the talking book of The Three Doctors was nothing short of staggering, so I shouldn’t really be surprised.

At the beginning of Wrath of the Ice Warriors, when the 2nd Doctor realises that he’s in Scotland, he remarks that it’s a pity Jamie isn’t with him. I agreed. In fact, there was no reason at all why this story had to be a 6B adventure, it could just as easily have been set in the 2nd Doctor’s established continuity. Once again, I was left scratching my head wondering why Big Finish are going down the 6B route when not just Frazer Hines but also Wendy Padbury are still available for work. In fact, we already know that Jamie will be returning for these 6B adventures which, for me, makes the whole set up all the more pointless.

In a nutshell, Beyond War Games is deeply flawed but still enjoyable. It is the 2nd Doctor after all. Okay, Big Finish, I’m in. Let’s see where Bargain Bin Servalan (Raven) sends him next.

I’ve always said that, for me, the most traumatic regeneration in the history of Doctor Who was that of Patrick Troughton’s Doctor at the end of The War Games. Unlike other regenerations, we didn’t see one Doctor fall to the floor (or explode into a CGI firework display if you’re a younger viewer) only to sit up a moment later played by another actor. No, instead, my six year old self was left traumatised by the sight of a faceless Doctor spinning into the monochrome void. I then had to endure what, back then, seemed like a very long wait for the new Doctor to tumble out of the TARDIS the following year.

In the meantime, I kept up with the Doctor’s adventures in the pages of TV Comic, where, despite having been exiled to Earth in the 20th century, my hero still wore Patrick Troughton’s face. Well, that is until some scarecrows carted him off and gave him a Jon Pertwee makeover (don’t ask). Now, while I didn’t know about ‘canon’ in those days, I was sort of instinctively aware that the comic strips didn’t count (same with the stories in the annuals that I found under the Christmas tree each year). As far as I was concerned, the Time Lords had executed my Doctor and turned him into another fella. For me, there was no gap between Seasons 6 and 7. Some fans, however, didn’t feel the same way that I did, and Season 6B theory was born.

I was never attracted to the Season 6B theory as it seemed a lot of effort just to explain the fact that Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines looked older in The Two Doctors. Well, yes, of course they did – the actors WERE older! We, the audience, were meant to ignore that, surely? Not according to some Whovians, who decided that Troughton’s grey hair meant that the 2nd Doctor must have escaped his forced regeneration somehow and teamed up with Jamie again. I’m afraid that even when Terrance Dicks lent his support to the idea, I couldn’t take it seriously. So when Big Finish decided to fall down the Season 6B rabbit hole with Beyond War Games, I was initially resistant to follow them. While I normally snap up any 2nd Doctor adventure, Companion Chronicle or Short Trip that they produce, this time I decided to save my money. Okay, I’ll admit, I was curious, especially given that Michael Troughton would be stepping into his father’s shoes. If you’ve heard his narration of the Target novelisation of The Dominators, not to mention the audiobook of his own biography of his father, then you know that Michael does a spot on impression of his late dad (though, personally, I think David Troughton does a slightly better one). I tried to be strong, I really did, but then I received Beyond War Games as a Christmas present…and it would have been churlish of me not to give it a listen. (Please ignore any suggestions you might hear from my family that I was dropping hints left, right and centre that it would make a good gift.)

The box set contains two stories: ‘The Final Beginning’ and ‘Wrath of the Ice Warriors.’ In The Final Beginning, the 2nd Doctor materialises on a planet that is obviously not the Earth in the 20th century and is elated to find that his appearance hasn’t changed. At first he thinks it’s a Time Lord cock-up and he has escaped his sentence, however, he is haunted by strange snatches of dialogue that we, the audience, know comes from Pertwee’s first story, Spearhead in Space. I can’t tell you too much more about what follows because it would seriously spoil the story for anyone who wants to hear it. However, it is safe to say the story does follow the normal 6B speculation that it was the Celestial Intervention Agency that took a hand in pulling the 2nd Doctor from his own time stream and setting him up as a reluctant agent in their service. He’s also given a handler in the form of a particularly unpleasant Time Lady called Raven, to send him on his missions. Sad to say, rather than giving us someone interesting and mysterious in the mold of the Time Lords we saw in The War Games, Raven is a walking talking cliché of a character (think of her as a cut-price Servalan from Blake’s 7), and I quickly tired of her interventions. The story was…okay, but it suffered under the weight of trying to set up the framework for the 6B adventures.

What did I think of Wrath of the Ice Warriors then? To be continued...