We reach the end of Series One of Jago and Litefoot with The Similarity Engine and I have to confess that, unlike the first three stories in this box set, I didn’t remember a single thing about this story from my first listen, aside from the fact it sees the return of Dr Tulp. As a series finale should, The Similarity Engine ties up plot threads from across the previous stories, as well as loose ends left by the original Companion Chronicle, The Mahogany Murderers.  There are call backs to The Bellova Devil (the Far-Off Travellers Club has been funding Tulp’s experiments) and The Spirit Trap (the mention of another ‘presence’ and travelling the astral plane to the 49th Century.  The wooden dummies of The Mahogany Murderers have here been refined into practically life-like puppets – one of which is a perfect replica of Jago himself.

Tulp’s ultimate plan is revealed.  In his mental trips to the future he has discovered uranium.  He plans to take control of the world’s resources and subsequently rule the world.  His plan is discovered when policemen under the command of Sergeant Quick are going missing.  It turns out many of them are moonlighting at the docks and are being exposed to uranium.  They are suffering from radiation poisoning.  Jago is captured and replaced by a doppleganger but Litefoot sees through the charade.

The final confrontation with Tulp reveals that, whilst traversing the astral plane, he has encountered an alien intelligence.  Eventually it absorbs him.

This was a satisfying end to the season.  The tying up of plot threads is welcome and allows the Jago and Litefoot universe to seem a little more developed.  This feels a more involved adventure than the fairly straightforward format definers of the previous releases; although of course as a story this wouldn’t be able to stand alone.

After focussing on Ellie in the previous story, this adventure sees more time spent with Sergeant Quick; including a fun scene where he accidentally saves Litefoot’s life.  He isn’t developed as much as Ellie but it is good to see him getting more ‘screen’ time.  Jago and Litefoot continue in the roles that have been set out previously: Litefoot is the investigator, initially skirting the fringes of the mystery and gathing clues; whilst Jago gets into the thick of the action.  This has worked well in this series, but I hope their roles are developed a little in Series 2.  I liked Toby Longworth’s performance as Dr Tulp and Matt Steer gives good support to Christopher Benjamin as one of Quick’s missing coppers, Smitty.  Lisa Bowerman only appears briefly as Ellie.

Intriguingly, another thing I had forgotten about this story was that it ends on a cliffhanger.  Bodies drained of blood are being found by Quick’s men but for some reason, Litefoot decides to keep this from Jago declaring it to be a case for Litefoot and Sanders.

I don’t find I’ve a huge amount more to say about this.  I liked it, but as I’ve said before, this series hasn’t set my world on fire.  I am, however, still eager to listen to more.  Big Finish must be doing something right with this series for it to reach 13 box sets before the sad passing of Trevor Baxter (with another being released posthumously).  I really like the leads, the support from Conrad Asquith and Bowerman is solid and the overall atmosphere is a good listen.  I would just like the storylines to expand this universe a little more.

The Spirit Trap is a puzzling story. It starts to widen the ‘world’ of Jago and Litefoot, as well as put a lot more focus on Ellie; on the other hand it is also perilously similar to The Unquiet Dead, I’m surprised Mark Gatiss didn’t sue! Consequently, I’m not sure if I like it or not.

Ellie alerts Jago and Litefoot to a medium, Mrs Vanguard, she has visited who claims to have spoken to her brother Jim. Naturally cynical about Mrs Vanguard’s supernatural abilities, Jago and Litefoot attend a séance principally to expose her charlatanism but also partly because if there is even a vague chance she is speaking the truth, the secret of Jim’s death – and Jago’s part in it – may be revealed to Ellie. Jago successfully reveals Mrs Vanguard’s apparent tricks to fake the spirits of the departed but it transpires a far more sinister situation is afoot when both Ellie and Jago are possessed, their own selves plunged into some form of purgatory.

Whilst listening to this it was almost impossible not to think about The Unquiet Dead. There is a séance and body-possessing spirits. It even climaxes with a character sacrificing themselves to banish the spirits from our world. Apparently, the original version of The Unquiet Dead was even closer to this story, with a fake medium just like Mrs Vanguard – a delightfully named, Mrs Plumchute – turning out to have ‘real’ abilities thanks to the alien spirits. Seriously, has Mark Gatiss heard this story? Of course, there are differences – principally the origin of the ‘spirits’ and, more importantly, the fact that two of the bodies which are possessed belong to Ellie and Jago, still very much alive throughout the process; unlike the corpses used by the Gelth in The Unquiet Dead.

Ellie and Jago are very much the focus of this story. In fact, I’m starting to wonder when Litefoot is going to get a more central chunk of the storyline. Here, again, he is on the fringes of the story, investigating the mysterious situation whilst Jago himself is in the thick of it, actually experiencing the supernatural happenings. Both Benjamin and Baxter, though, continue to be excellent; even if Benjamin’s ‘possessed’ acting is a little cliched.

After worrying that I was finding it difficult to become accustomed to Lisa Bowerman as Ellie, so used to her performance as Bernice Summerfield, it seems that the production team of the series may have had a similar concern. To some extent it worked as I became much more accepting of this character – although I still find her ‘cockney’ voice to be oddly pitched; it seems she is suggesting youth by pitching her voice high, but this has the effect of making it sound a little mannered and ‘performed’. There were a couple of times when her performance reminded me a little of Catrin Stewart’s Jenny Flint (another ‘cockernee’ girl performance I find a bit difficult to ‘believe’ in.)

It could also be, of course, that the production team just wanted to push Ellie’s character to the fore a little more, seeing as she is the third main character. That said, there isn’t a huge amount of character development here and what there is, isn’t particularly complimentary. Ellie is presented as being rather gullible and Jago and Litefoot are rather untactful with their destruction of Mrs Vanguard’s operation, not really taking Ellie’s feelings into account. That said, when trapped in ‘purgatory’ with Jago, a gentle bond develops between them with Jago insisting Ellie calls him Henry. I think we may consider this story to be a turning point in the relationship between Jago and Litefoot and Ellie, taking it from being the ‘gentlemen’ and the friendly barmaid to one of friends brought together through shared experiences. It will be interesting to see how this develops, particularly with the secret the gentlemen are hiding about the circumstances of her brother’s death.

A small cast supports the three main players with Mrs Vanguard is played with relish by Janet Henfrey and Lex Shrapnel gives good value as the sacrificial Toby. Sergeant Quick is conspicious by his absence and I wonder if a later story will push him a little more to the fore.

One aspect of the story which chilled me a little were the references to spontaneous human combustion. As a child, about 11 or 12, I think, I had a book of the strange and unexplained. One chapter was about spontaneous human combustion. The concept of human beings bursting into flame for no reason terrified me – and stuck with me for quite a few of my teenage years (I think it only stopped terrifying me when I finally saw Threads…). The scene between Toby and Litefoot discussing the apparent death of Toby’s wife brought the memory flooding back and I could picture the book and the photographs within it. It’s a gruesome element to a quite spooky story.

Historically, this story deals with the previously mentioned Victorian fascination with spiritualism and focusses on the fact that, at the time, there were many fake mediums who preyed upon the recently bereaved. Jago’s exposure of Mrs Vanguard’s tricks highlights some of their practices.

There are less overt Holmesian references (of the Sherlock, not the Robert) variety this time round, although Litefoot’s investigations have a familiar flavour.The presence of disembodied antagonists places this story firmly in a growing list of similar stories I’ll be casting a retrospective eye over towards the end of this century.

As a Jago and Litefoot story this continued to establish the basic format. The adventure was fun and the mystery surrounding the ‘spirits’ remains to be fully resolved (I’m assuming it will be picked up in the final story. However, the strong similarities with The Unquiet Dead made it seem overly familiar, particularly listening to this relatively soon after watching that story.

I still can’t say I’m convinced Jago and Litefoot is the jewel in the Big Finish crown that endless reviews have it pegged as but I can't deny they can still be entertaining.

The second story, The Bellova Devil, has a slightly odd structure which makes it feel almost like a Companion Chronicle. There are quite a few scenes where Jago and Litefoot both recount events which have happened previously and there are possibly a few too many times where events happen ‘off-screen’, as it were. However, it is certainly a stronger story than The Bloodless Soldier, with a few more twists and turns and more than a passing resemblance to one of this series’ ancestors, Sherlock Holmes.

The story sees Jago and Litefoot investigating another mystery surrounding a dead body. In a unfortunate similarity to the first story, the body is that of a soldier. Initially this made it seem like this story might tread similar ground, particular with early scenes at the mortuary, but fortunately as some clues are revealed, the story takes some intriguing turns. Eventually, the duo are lead to a ‘gentlemen’s club’ and an encounter with Dr Tulp, the mysterious figure behind the Mahogany Murderers of the original ‘pilot’ episode for this series.

The many references to Sherlock Holmes may seem a little gratuitous but I find it quite heart-warming that the series is this willing to wear its heart on its sleeve. Doctor Who has never been shy of pushing its influences to the front and Jago and Litefoot’s two main influences are, at this early point in the series, Hinchcliffe-era Who and Sherlock Holmes (which are, of course, neatly wrapped together in the parcel that is this spin-off’s birthright: The Talons of Weng-Chiang). In this story there is an overt reference to ‘the Red-Headed League’ and a rather funny joke about Holmes’ philosophy of detection (where eliminating the impossible leaves the, however improbable, answer). There is also Jago donning a disguise and dodgy accent to evade his creditors in a manner reminiscent of Holmes going undercover to solve a mystery (and indeed, Jago later uses the same disguise to attempt just this). Furthermore, the whole mystery feels very Sherlock Holmes in its structure and resolution. It reminded me somewhat of the aforementioned Red-Headed League and The Sign of Four.

This story also continues to cement the characters of Jago and Litefoot; Jago in particular. His internal struggle of being an inveterate coward against his desire to seem brave and steadfast has played out across this first three stories and Christopher Benjamin plays it beautifully. Litefoot still seems slightly less interesting, although his growing affection for Jago is touching and, again, Trevor Baxter, is brilliant in the role.

This stories main guest star is Doctor Who legend, Stephen Thorne. Playing the ‘Club Secretary’, he oozes dignified menace, especially when he leads Jago off to his apparent death. The rest of the cast (including Big Finish regulars, Duncan Wisbey and Toby Longworth) provide good support.

One aspect of the series I am having a slight issue with is the presence of Lisa Bowerman as Ellie. Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Lisa Bowerman. She is utterly superb as Bernice and, in person, is completely lovely (and always remembers (or at least pretends to remember J ) me. It’s probably because of this that I find it really hard to take her seriously as Ellie. It just feels like Benny doing a ‘bit’. Ellie hardly appears in this story which helps, although Lisa does also crop up as a Bulgar woman with a thick European accent. The same problem more or less applies. I am hoping that as the series progresses and I become used to hearing Lisa as Ellie, this problem , which I fully admit is totally my issue and nothing to do with Bowerman’s performance, will cease to be.

Lisa Bowerman’s Bulgar woman is where this series ties itself into history a little more closely than it has up to now. The Bulgars who are featured in this story are a real-life semi-nomadic Turkic people (a large group of people living in various parts of Asia). I couldn’t however, find any reference to them tying rose-briar around the feet of the dead to prevent them from rising from the grave (although I probably haven’t tried very hard).

One aspect of the production I neglected to mention in my review of The Bloodless Soldier was the awesome theme music. It is simply wonderful. Some of the spin-off ranges, where there hasn’t been a ready made TV theme tune to use, have struggled to find a successful intro. I really don’t like the Iris Wildthyme and everyone at Big Finish is, I’m sure, desperately trying to forget the awful ‘Adventure is My Name’ fiasco that sullied the Bernice Summerfield range for far too many releases. However, this effort for Jago and Litefoot is perfect and manages to be evocative of all the series’ various influences.

Whilst still not the most gripping of tales, The Bellova Devil shows an upward trend for these stories and I continue to look forward to where this series is heading.

With the success of the Companion Chronicle, The Mahogany Murderers, it wasn’t long before Big Finish announced a box set of full-cast audios featuring the investigators of infernal incidents, Jago and Litefoot.  I have listened to this box set once before and, to be honest, I was a little underwhelmed.  I don’t really know why, but I’m up for a re-evaluation and plunged into this first adventure, The Bloodless Soldier, with aplomb.

The plot is fairly straightforward and it more serves as a platform to set up the main players and setting for this series.  Obviously we have Jago and Litefoot, but they are also joined by Bernice Summerfield as Ellie Higson (given far more to do here than in the Companion Chronicle) and Conrad Asquith as Sergeant Quick (a minor character from The Talons of Weng-Chiang, also played in that story by Asquith).  Ellie is relatively central to this story, as her brother – a soldier returning from the Empire – is involved in the mystery presented to Jago and Litefoot.  Quick is a link to the various crimes which begin these mysteries, bringing various corpses to the attention of Professor Litefoot at the mortuary.

A small group of soldiers has returned to England from India, but their captain is an unwell man.  It turns out he has been scratched by some monster and has, effectively, become a werewolf of some sort.  It is all a little vague and unexplained as, aside from a small scene at the beginning.  A character from India arrives, Sunil (played by John Banks) to explain a little more; there is some stuff about a monster which survives on blood and tops itself up on unsuspecting humans – but I never really felt like the ‘explanation’ was fully explored.

The soldiers, unfortunately, all sound rather similar and I did find it difficult to tell them apart.  John Banks is here again as Private Higson (Ellie’s brother), with Robin Bowerman (Lisa’s brother – confusing, eh?) as Corporal Lorton, Alex Lowe as Private Michaels and Alex Mallinson as Private Smith.  Scenes involve various combinations of them with the ‘monster’; their former Captain (again played by John Banks, but it’s mostly growling).  From scene to scene, I started to get a bit lost as to who was who and doing what.  Eventually, Michaels heads off with the monster to try and make some money and Higson dies at its claws trying to protect Jago and Litefoot.

With the vague back story and an interchangeable guest cast, this is, to be honest, a bit of a step down from The Mahogany Murderers.  It doesn’t help that ‘werewolves’ have been done to death a little in genre fiction and nothing new is done with them her, aside from add in a less than interesting, vampiric ability.  The plot is basically: find a dead body with animal-like wounds; track it down; realise its actually a human; do away with it; the end.  It is too similar to many others of its ilk.

On the plus side, the dimension of Ellie’s brother being involved and ultimately sacrificing himself adds some interest.  It’ll be interesting to see if this is picked up later in the series as Higson dies at the hands of Jago when he is forced to shoot him, implored by Higson, to prevent a full transformation.  Jago and Litefoot are also the highlight of this story with their characters being explored a little more and some progression in their friendship is allowed to occur.  I particularly liked Christopher Benjamin’s scenes immediately after shooting Higson which showed a side of Jago – the juxtaposition of his cowardice with his desire to do the right thing by those he loves -hinted at in Talons but obviously due to be explored a little more in this series.

Atmosphere-wise, Victorian London (or at least the ‘romantic’ interpretation of it, is well-realised in the soundscape and whilst this is never going to be regarded as a pinnacle of the series, it is at least, a satisfactory beginning which establishes the regular cast and hints at some developments to come  I think it’s telling that I’ve waited a few days before finding the will to write up this review, so I’m hoping that the later episodes are more inspirational.

When it was first announced that Jago and Litefoot would be featuring in a Companion Chronicle - which was, originally, designed to allow opportunities for stories with Doctors no longer with us - there was a little ripple of consternation which soon gave way to interest and anticipation when fans realised that Jago and Litefoot were perfect for this sort of format. I have always thought it a shame that Big Finish didn’t pursue this a little further – we had The Prisoner of Peladon with David Troughton’s King Peladon, but it would have been great to see stories featuring Glitz and Dibber, or HG Wells, or Hugo Lang, or (oh this would have been superb) Will Chandler! – all those ‘nearly companions that could have had one extra adventure with the Doctor.

But, I digress. Jago and Litefoot fit perfectly and even after the first few scenes this Companion Chronicle had spin-off series written all over it. Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter slip effortlessly back into their roles. As they say in the interview included with the CD, Andy Lane, the writer, has written the characters perfectly and every line of dialogue feels authentic. With two voices already, the only other performer in this is Lisa Bowerman who takes on dual roles of director and the small part of Ellie Higson, local barmaid. She has very little to do here, but it will be interesting to see how her role develops in the full series.

The plot of wooden puppets containing the souls of various criminals is good fun and a good fit for Jago and Litefoot’s Victorian world. It has certain steampunk echoes and it will be interesting to see how this is developed in the full series. There are, however, a number of unanswered questions which suggest this was always intended as a possible pilot for a full series. In the interview at the end of the story David Richardson asks if Benjamin and Baxter would be willing to return for a further adventure but I wouldn’t be surprised if this hadn’t already been mooted by the Big Finish bigwigs and this bending of the Companion Chronicle format was a result of such a discussion.

The production has some lovely sound design evoking a Victorian pub, a warehouse full of mysterious electrical equipment and various other locales.

Historically, this is tied in more with the romantic, literary view of Victorian London than anything factual. There are some strong Sherlock Holmes vibes throughout the piece – particularly a sequence where Litefoot pursues a suspicious character through the streets of London. The Victorian obsessions with science and spiritualism crop up with the wooden, electrically-controlled bodies being occupied by intangible souls (echoing the similar themes of The Unquiet Dead).

Overall, this is a strong Companion Chronicle and it is clear why Big Finish saw this potential of Jago and Litefoot having their own spin-off series.

This story is the most quintessential and famous example of Victorian Doctor Who. The Talons of Weng-Chiang is one of those stories which has gained legendary status. It consistently comes in the top ten of any poll and is a story which has spawned possibly more spin-offs, sequels and linked stories, than any other story not featuring a classic ‘monster’: The Shadow of Weng-Chiang, The Bodysnatchers, The Butcher of Brisbane and of course 14 box sets of Jago and Litefoot (plus sundry other audios).

Something about The Talons of Weng-Chiang sits well with how fandom considers Doctor Who should be. A well-realised historical setting; unsettling vllains; a pitch perfect Tom Baker; well-scripted and performed supporting characters; a good plot; exciting set pieces and a effectively sketched backstory: all these make to produce something a little bit special. Oh yes, and a giant rat.

I’ve always enjoyed this story, but watching it for my marathon I started to find some things which bugged me a little. Maybe it’s a case of familiarty breeds contempt. This was possibly the first VHS I ever bought(the memory is a little hazy) but I distinctly remember going into my local branch of Our Price (blimey, who remembers them?!) and choosing Talons. And why did I chose it? Was it the stunning cover (a rather odd shot of Greel and the large dragon from the climax of the story? Was it the intriguing blurb on the back? No, it was the fact that it had the longest running time of all the choices I had and felt like more value for money!

Talons does justify its running length, though. It doesn’t feel padded at all. The opening of the story concentrates on the mysterious goings-on at the theatre, with the focus on Chang and Sin, before the middle episodes move the focus on to Greel and his plans, before the final episodes shift focus on to the growing bond between Litefoot and Jago.

The expanse of the story is quite epic; from the theatre to the back streets of Limehouse; the police station to Litefoot’s mortuary and home; the sewers and finally the House of the Dragon. However, I did find the set dressing to be somewhat lacklustre. The theatre is wonderful, but when we get to Litefoot’s house and I just felt something was lacking. Comparing it to Gabriel Chase from Ghost Light, for example, it seemed drabber and less interesting. Maybe Litefoot’s abode is closer to what true Victorian interior décor would have been. The House of the Dragon has the very impressive dragon as its centrepiece but the rest of the ‘house’ is a little sparse. Roger Murray-Leach, on the extras, confesses they had run out of money by this stage of the production and that the walls of the house’s interiors are simply black drapes. Any criticism of this story is always centred on the Giant Rat, but I think, just occasionally, the set design lets it down a little.

The performances are universally excellent, and if we tactfully ignore the arguable racism of casting John Bennett as ‘a Chinese’, he provides a great villain. In fact, I prefer Chang to Greel as he is a far more layered character. Clearly a gifted magician, someone who has been manipulated by Greel and who is ultimately abandoned. His final pathetic, drug-addled form is an interesting end for a character who has been an main antagonist for much of the story. Michael Spice’s Greel is saddled a little with ‘mad meglomaniac’ scripting, but there is also a tragic side to him which is more obvious at the climax when the Doctor is confronting him over his origins.

Tom Baker is on top of his game in this story. He has settled in the role and it’s a while before he started to let the eccentricity get the better of his performance. Louise Jameson is excellent as Leela, but it was interesting to watch her ‘earliest’ story of this marathon so far, and contrast it with the performances I’m more familiar with, particularly bearing in mind her ubiquity in Big Finish productions. This version of Leela is far more naïve and almost childlike. She seems incredibly fresh-faced and whilst the ‘savage’ tendencies are at the forefront it was less of the ‘warrior woman’ seen in Wrath of the Iceni, or the noble savage contrasted with the corrupt intellect of the Time Lords (as seen in the Gallifrey series); but more the attitude of a young, inexperienced child who reacts to the world with violence and anger because she hasn’t been taught how to talk through a situation. The Eliza Dolittle comparisons are fairly obvious, particularly in her scenes with Professor Litefoot at dinner, but it is interesting how this ‘education’ of Leela has been developed in the Big Finish audios.

Front and centre, though, of this story are Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter as Jago and Litefoot. In the extras, Baxter points out that the duo do not actually meet until the final third of the story. As characters they are developed and established as individuals in their respective worlds, interacting with the Doctor and Leela, until finally coming together to fight Greel. It is no wonder that Big Finish leapt on the idea of doing a spin-off series with them. Their worlds and characters are so detailed and entertaining that it does seem like a no-brainer. In just the same way that fans often call for a spin-off with the Paternoster Gang, if fandom had been like it is now, back then, you can guarantee the forums would have been full of Jago and Litefoot Need a Series threads. Benjamin and Baxter are superb. The scene where Jago confesses to Litefoot that he is actually terrified, is very moving (even if the audience has been well aware of this fact since the Rock fo Gibraltar fainted in the theatre cellar and had to be dragged out by the Doctor); and Litefoot’s dinner with Leela is a delightful comedy of manners.

Historically, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, as the extras point out, is more about the literary heritage of Victorian life than anything factually accurate. This story wears a lot of its influences on the sleeves of its enormous greatcoat: Sherlock Holmes; Jack the Ripper; Fu Manchu; The Importance of Being Earnest; My Fair Lady. It’s all foggy streets, murderous Chinamen, ladies of the night and mysterious foreigners. And very good it is too. It’s the sort of historical setting that the black and white historical stories were leaning to in their latter years: it’s reminiscent of The Smugglers and The Highlanders which were far more influenced by literary versions of history such as Doctor Syn and Kidnapped than the more factual approach of early historicals such as The Aztecs or The Massacre. It probable that we could work through all the historically-set stories, both pure and pseudo, and separate them into ‘fact-based’ and ‘literature-based’ versions of history: even the modern series stories probably fall into both – contrast the ‘Agatha Christie murder mystery version of the 1920s (even if including Christie herself) from The Unicorn and the Wasp, against the more intense ‘Pompeii erupts’ of The Fires of Pompeii or the examination of Van Gogh’s depression in Vincent and the Doctor.

Doctor Who does both of these types of historical well but they achieve different ends. Whilst The Massacre may educate us about history, The Talons of Weng-Chiang steeps us in atmosphere and draws on a cultural understanding of Victorian life perpetuated by continual adaptations of Charles Dickens, examinations of Jack the Ripper and even modern series which draw on Victorian tropes such as Whitechapel. Doctor Who itself continues to delve into Victoriana for inspiration with The Unquiet Dead, Tooth and Claw, The Next Doctor, The Snowmen, The Crimson Horror and Deep Breath spanning all 4 ‘new series’ Doctors; not to mention the Paternoster Gang providing a reason for the show to continually return to this time period.

After watching the story, I listened to The Foe from the Future, one of the Lost Stories range from Big Finish. It is the story that The Talons of Weng-Chiang replaced. It does bear some passing similarities – a deformed villain from the future being the most obvious; but on the whole it is a very different story, not least because its main setting is ‘contemporary’ Earth with a journey to the future in the middle episodes. It was good, but I prefer Talons and I don’t think, if it had made it to the screen, it would be topping the chart polls in the same way Talons does, as it seems rather more generic.

It has taken me a while to write this review. I think the fact that Talons is such a behemoth of a story within the series and fandom, that I wasn’t sure I had anything new to say. It is a quite wonderful story. It is brilliantly written and faultlessly acted. It shows just what Doctor Who is capable of when spinning together disparate elements such as a time travelling dicatator from a war-torn future with the foggy streets of Victorian London. Much as I disagree with fandom a lot on the relative merit of some stories, Talons is one where I have to agree with the consensus. A tour de force.

Firstly, a couple of thoughts about the previous adventure for Jago and Litefoot, Voyage to Venus, which begins their brief travels with the 6th Doctor in two special releases from Big Finish which were released alongside Jago and Litefoot’s own spin-off series .  Whilst set in the far, far future, Voyage to Venus owes a huge debt to Victorian literature with clear influences of HG Wells and Jules Verne; think Journey to the Centre of the Earth.  The whole idea of a tribe of female warriors on Venus screams Victorian ‘science fiction’.  I really enjoyed it.

And then we reach the colony of Roanoke and the New World.  I often stick these stories on my phone to listen to without looking at cast lists or writer’s credits.  As I’m listening to them I’m often pondering as to who the actors are as I recognise voices and sometimes, when I go online to check the cast list I’m surprised.  I hadn’t taken much notice of the credits for this story before listening to it and as the story wore on found myself wishing I had the cast list to hand – not to know the actors, but to know the characters.  There are a plethora of male voices in this story and they all sound almost identical.  I was lost for huge portions of the story as I had no idea who was talking to who.  It made it very difficult to follow what was going on and what the motivations of people were.

The story sees the Doctor, Jago and Litefoot taken prisoner by some European settlers who are fighting the native Americans.  A colony’s inhabitants have disappeared and a strange affliction is affecting people, including Jago.  Mysterious, ghostly children are visible to the sick and eventually both the Doctor and Litefoot succumb to what is revealed to be an alien parasitic species.

There is also some stuff with Sir Walter Raleigh travelling in the TARDIS and ending up a 500 year old man but I didn’t really understand how any of that happened!

I got to the end of this audio and didn’t quite know what I’d listened to.  The confusion of voices; the ethereal atmosphere; the timey-wimey Raleigh/TARDIS stuff.  It was all very unsatisfying, despite excellent performances from Colin Baker, Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter who continue to delight in their respective roles.  The rest of the cast do their best and the atmosphere is suitably doom-laden.  But I couldn’t shake the feeling that this just didn’t work for me.

And then I went online and found the reason.  Matthew Sweet.

I hadn’t realised this script was the work of Matthew Sweet.  I’m not a fan of Matthew Sweet.  His audios for Big Finish have been some of least favourite.  Far too clever for their own good, they leave me cold.  The Year of the Pig, his debut, is one of the most horrendously smug audios I’ve had the misfortune to listen to.  A couple of other have been better, The Magic Mousetrap is okay and one of his Jago and Litefoot stories, The Man at the End of the Garden, isn’t bad.  Overall, however, I find the ideas in his stories far more interesting than the actual execution.  But Voyage to the New World is a prime example of why I don’t like his writing.  It’s just too dense.  I come to Doctor Who for adventure, escapism, fun.  Yes, I have enjoyed many a historical story where it’s all doom and gloom.  Yes, I’ve enjoyed many an introspective story that isn’t about romping through time and space.  I just don’t like the way Matthew Sweet does it.  His style grates on me (his documentary for the 50th anniversary year was my least favourite offering from that cavalcade of celebratory content – it, like his audios, was arrogant and reminded me of the way Elizabeth Sandifer writes about Doctor Who.  It’s this attempt to make Doctor Who ‘intellectual’ and ‘about something’ which I just can’t abide.  It might not be intentional on Sweet’s part, but I can’t help but feel like that about his writing.

Historically, the lost colony of Roanoke is a recorded event.  There was indeed a colony set up by Sir Walter Raleigh.  John White (who also features in the story) had been appointed Governor of the colony by Raleigh and, in 1590, he did indeed, after a trip back to England, arrive back to find Roanoke deserted with no trace of the colonists and the word Croatoan carved into a fence post.  Eleanor Dare, the daughter of John White, also features in the story – initially falling victim to the mysterious children, but eventually being saved by the restoration of the timelines (although in the real history, she did disappear).

Somewhere within Voyage to the New World is a great story based around a real historical mystery – the kind of story Doctor Who does so well.  However, obfuscated as it is by the style of Sweet, I found it difficult to enjoy.  Part of me wants to relisten and try to concentrate on the story (part of my confusion – the similarity of the voices – isn’t really Sweet’s fault) but mustering up the will to do so may take a while.

I’m not sure what I think about the output of Titan. There are definitely some good comic stories within their work but I think, overall, I prefer what IDW put out before Titan took over the comic licence. There is a lot of Titan’s output that is, how shall we say, ‘out there’. There are a lot of very odd concepts, weird characters and huge storylines. The 11th Doctor arc which ends up involving the War Doctor, a child Master and all manner of weird Time War shenanigans is one which made my brain go all swirly when I tried to read it.

The 10th Doctor stories are a bit more straightfoward – at least to begin with, as there is a very odd arc involving Sutekh and Anubis which I can’t quite get a handle on. One thing the strips do well, though, are the original companions accompanying the Doctor. The 11th Doctor has Alice and the 10th Doctor has Gabby Gonzales. She’s a fun companion to have around with some interesting abilities revolving around block transfer computations. Admittedly, some of the intricacies of her character have passed me by as I haven’t read all her stories (although I’m intrigued enough to go back and read everything in sequence to better understand her storyline).

In this two part adventure she demonstrates her strange abilities and seems to be enjoying life in the 1920s which is clearly where she, the Doctor and their other travelling companion Cindy Wu, have been staying for some time.

Cindy is not a character I have warmed to at all in the comics. She is Gabby’s best friend from New York but only seems to join the Doctor because she misses Gabby too much. Her defining characteristic seems to be ‘angry’. She’s constantly sniping at the Doctor and is a harsher version of Tegan in a way. The stories I’ve read featuring her never give the impression she particularly enjoys travelling time and space which is a stark contrast to Gabby, who seems to love it.

The Jazz Monster and Music Man put Cindy through the wringer and do nothing to improve her general mood. I’m not entirely sure what we’re supposed to think about Cindy as there’s little about her that makes her likeable and her adventures in time and space see her effectively playing third wheel to the Doctor and Gabby.

The story opens with Gabby strolling through the streets of New Orleans during ‘the jazz age’ (a lovely opening image with some nice period details) as she heads off the meet the Doctor. He, apparently, is in a bit of a mood and rarely leaves the TARDIS. Cindy is elsewhere and Gabby intends on taking the Doctor to meet her after they’ve eaten together. Cindy is at a jazz club, the Red Eye. As soon as the Doctor arrives he sense something is wrong and, true enough, it soon transpires that some of the musicians have been possessed by an alien entity. It turns out to be the King Nocturne, an energy being that deals in sound. The Doctor and Gabby have encountered the Nocturne before on an alien planet in the future and know how to defeat them. Unfortunately, Cindy’s new romantic interest, Roscoe is possessed and ultimately dies at the hands of the Nocturne.

Music is at the heart of this adventure, which is a difficult element to depict in comic strip form. I can imagine that this would be brilliant as an audio – although it would likely be headache-inducing as much of the story involves the musicians along with the Doctor, Gabby and Cindy, playing discordant music to weaken the Nocturne. But, it is really tricky to satisfactorily show this through the comic strip art. That said, for Titan comics, it’s a relatively straightforward affair albeit with a tragic ending – along with Roscoe quite a lot of other people die at the hands of the Nocturne. The final frame of a rather impotent-looking Doctor watching a grieving Cindy with Gabby comforting her and all of them surrounded by bodies is quite chilling and a contrast to the ‘angry’ 10th Doctor we got on TV in his final days, or even the ‘cocky’ Doctor we got in before the specials. It brought to mind the final scenes of Warriors of the Deep.

The artwork in Titan’s comics can be a bit hit and miss for me – I found The Weeping Angels of Mons to be a bit ‘scratchy’ and ill-defined. The 11th Doctor strips tend to give me a bit of a headache with their imagery. This strip, though, has good artwork which clearly depicts what’s happening with some nice images such as the Nocturne itself.

The story finds this TARDIS team in Singapore during the Japanese invasion of 1942. In a short amount of time the four of them are holed up at the local hotel alongside a squad of soldiers waiting for evacuation and the hotel owner, Maggie Bishop.

This is a fitting historical period for Ben and Polly. As ‘contemporaries’ of 1966 the war would be within living memory. Both of them could feasibly have been born during the war if we assume they are in the early to mid-twenties in The War Machines. Their parents would most definitely have lived through the conflict, probably being part of it and, indeed, The Forsaken finds Ben meeting his father as a young man and soldier.

A figure that looks like death stalks the hotel and it is soon discovered that the staff, thought fled because of the conflict and evacuation, have actually all been murdered. An alien called the Forsaken crashed in the forest and is feeding on the fear generated by the war raging across the globe. It also has the ability to temporarily take the form of others.

As an Early Adventure, this is one of Big Finish’s forays into trying to recreate an era of the show where some of the original cast are no longer with us. Initially, Big Finish did this through the Companion Chronicles where the conceit was one character telling the story. Whilst Jamie or Steven or Zoe may be telling us what the Doctor said, there was no suggestion they were ‘being’ the Doctor. With the Early Adventures, Big Finish developed the skills of actors like Frazer Hines and Peter Purves to imitate their respective Doctors and created a range of ‘full cast’ audios, albeit with some narration still intact (in this story, Anneke Wills is on narration duty). The role of Ben is filled by Elliot Chapman.

And for me, these Early Adventures can succeed or fail on my ability to convince myself I’m listening to the original cast. Chapman makes for a very good Ben, but as that really boils down to a young cockney accent it isn’t too much of a stretch. Add to that the fact that most of Michael Craze’s performances are lost and it becomes very easy to imagine Chapman is Craze.

Unfortunately, I’ve fallen a little out of love with Frazer Hines’s Troughton impersonation. In the early days it was astonishing an in the slightly heightened conceit of the narrated Companion Chronicles, worked really well. But as time has worn on, it’s become more and more apparent that Hines’s performance is a little one note. He relies almost exclusively on breathy pauses and whilst he does invoke Troughton’s voice, inevitably, he struggles to reflect Trougton’s performance. And I think Big Finish have over-relied on him. Ironically, it seems that they have realised this themselves with Hines seemingly having been retired in favour of Trougton’s son, Michael Troughton.

The Forsaken though is a good if rather slight adventure. It’s pretty straightforward and fairly obvious from the outset what’s going on. A crashed alien in the forest that feeds on fear, in a story set during World War Two isn’t hitting any particularly original beats. The squad of soldiers are a bit tricky to distinguish from each other but there are some effectively exciting scenes both in the hotel and the nearby jungle with the creature taking the form of various characters.

Sadly, the one interesting aspect – Ben meeting his father – is set up in the first episode and then more or less ignored until the final episode where it’s main contribution is a rather silly gag about Ben’s name. It’s a shame a little more couldn’t have been done with the conceit or even that Ben and his dad could have shared a few more scenes than they actually do. The whole idea is just sort of ‘there’ alongside the monster story and the two aren’t really meshed together.

Justin Richards, the writer, has delivered a story which falls into his ‘serviceable adventure’ genre. I’ve found his writing can go either way for me – a great, if traditional, Doctor Who adventure, or a by-the-numbers slightly dull ‘a to b’ plotline which doesn’t quite engage. This one definitely tips towards the unengaging end but does have some effective set pieces and good performances from the cast. The historical and geographical setting are also different enough to be interesting and Richards scatters a few elements of World War Two into the mix which haven’t featured in the marathon so far. Seeing the conflict from the point of view of combatants who are ‘escaping’ and evoking the hot jungles of the Far East contrasts with the Blitz-centred tendency to focus on the British aspect of WW2.

The horrors of the Japanese element of the war is something I’ve always been interested in as my grandfather was a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp and one of few men to survive the ordeal (apparently thanks to his first aid skills enabling him to assist the Dutch doctor in the camp). Whilst this story doesn’t even begin to touch on that part of the war, even being in that part of the world with the sort of men my grandfather probably fought alongside, adds a resonance to this story for me and a slight disappointment that Doctor Who doesn’t seem to have ventured into that world – although coupled with a thankfulness that a particularly horrific time and place isn’t in danger of being trivialised by the show. One only needs to watch shows like Tenko or the film Paradise Road to see the horror experienced by people in those camps.

But that’s not really what The Forsaken is about but, even if the story itself is a little formulaic, I’m glad it exists and acknowledges a war beyond the borders of the UK.

We're in the trenches of World War One as we join the 10th Doctor and his new(ish) companion, Gabby Gonzalez, on an unplanned trip to the Somme. In actuality, this strip has sequences set in many different years, including some set in 1914 as well as quite a few in the 19th Century where some of the Angels victims are sent back to.

The Weeping Angels of Mons is a Titan-published comic strip and, as the title suggests, plays on the World War One legend of the Angel of Mons.  There is another comic strip called Warfreeqz which was published in the Doctor Who Adventures magazine.   In that instance, it was Rose who became the Angel of Mons but here, it is arguably the modern series’s most successful monster – the Lonely Assassins; the Weeping Angels. The legend details the appearance of angels on the battlefield and the disappearance of soldiers…a perfect fit for the Weeping Angels’ modus operandi.

The Weeping Angels are popping up all over the expanded universe of Doctor Who. They are obviously a great monster on TV, as their various episodes have demonstrated. It’s a huge shame that Class seems to be dead in the water after the shock reveal in the final episode of an Angel’s presence. Novels have worked with the Angels and even the audios have managed to include these most visual of monsters (Big Finish’s Fallen Angel works extremely well with a monster which makes no sound). But the comic strips is arguably where, in the expanded universe at least, the Angels work the best. Comic strips are visual like TV and artists can work with the distinctive and striking image of the Angels to create some compelling artwork.

Not that I feel the artwork in The Weeping Angels of Mons is fully successful. It’s a rather messy, scratchy style from artist Daniel Indro. The Weeping Angels are effectively drawn – particular when they have scary faces, but the human characters have features which are incredibly wrinkly and lined. The 10th Doctor’s likeness isn’t great in some of the frames either.

The artwork style does lend itself better to the scenery – the ruined town, filthy trenches and No Man’s Land look horrendous and squalid.

The Angels themselves work well in a historical setting – possibly much better than they do in the present day/future settings of their TV episodes. Soldiers leaning against, or taking cover behind, memorials and statues featuring angels is a relatable sight and the myths, legends and religious teaching surrounding Angels is reflected in the characters of the soldiers who have heard various tales as well as the company’s chaplain, Thomas Monaghan.

This story doesn’t really explore the Angels background or modus operandi in any new ways, but it does suggest that they are attracted to war and battlefields because of all the lost potential (which is, in this story, ultimately their downfall). Of more interest to this script is tying in the fates of those sent back in time, with the contemporary scenes of the story. All of the soldiers sent back in time end up some time in the 19th century. Their fates interweave with each other (the chaplain finds himself at the birth of Jamie Colqhoun, a soldier who is key to helping the Doctor and Gabby defeat the Angels, as well as providing a love interest for Gabby; another soldier grows old and returns to the town as an old man, knowing he can rescue his former comrades; another leads a happy life, married with children, only to die from shock and grief when war breaks out in 1914).

The 10th Doctor and Gabby are thrown into this horrific world and the Doctor is on good form as he lurches from one crisis to the next. He is required to think on his feet quite a lot in this story and it reminded me somewhat of the fast pace of stories like Tooth and Claw. Gabby is a more difficult to get a hold on. She’s a companion exclusive to Titan comics. I have read quite a few of her stories, including her debut, but haven’t quite managed to get a handle on her. Her defining characteristics seem to be her Hispanic heritage and her art-loving background. The latter is often used in the comic strips to create interludes where she writes and draws letters/diaries for her friend Cindy, who is still back in Gabby’s home city, New York (although she will later join the Doctor as a second companion). The parts of the strip which feature Gabby’s artwork are cute, but the writing is often quite tricky to read as the artists try to reflect Gabby’s personal handwriting (I read ‘Cindy’ as ‘Gudy’, for example).

There is a definite Rose vibe around Gabby in that she works in her father’s laundromat and restaurant with no real opportunity to pursue her ambitions in life. She’s a strong, independent woman, with a bantery relationship with the Doctor, very much in the mould of Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy, Clara and Bill and as such doesn’t really stand out as much more than a generic modern series companion. It doesn’t help that for this story, a lot of her plot revolves around her blossoming romance with the soldier, Jamie. I want to like Gabby but I think I need to re-read her run of comic strips to get a better handle on her (later on, for example, she starts to display some special and unusual abilities).

The First World War aspect of this story is highly reminiscent of the scenes in The Family of Blood set during the conflict. This similarity is compounded by the coda to this story which sees the Doctor and Gabby travelling forward in time to a war cemetery where, from a distance, they watch an elderly Jamie Colqhoun and his family visiting the graves of his fallen comrades. It’s very reminiscent of the scene at the end of The Family of the Blood where the Doctor and Martha watch a Remembrance Day ceremony with an elderly Timothy sitting in a wheelchair (just as Jamie does in this strip).

The historical setting, though, is really just a backdrop with the focus being on how horrible it was for the soldiers involved. There are a couple of references to the Christmas Truce and traditions prior to going ‘over the top’ but the lion’s share of the story focuses on the Angels. The final episode takes the Doctor and Gabby into mine tunnels under the trenches which relays a bit of information about how both sides recruited miners with the hope of tunnelling under No Man’s Land to reach the enemy’s line. Unsurprisingly, these tunnels were dangerous and the presence of explosives provides a climactic sequence where Jamie and Gabby attempt to sacrifice themselves to stop the Angels.

Aside from the artwork style, I found a lot to like in this comic strip. It’s a thrilling runaround and demonstrates how effective the Angels are in a historical setting. With more appealing artwork, I think this would rank as one of my favourite strips, although that may be partly because I think the Angels are a great invention of the modern series. If you haven’t already read it, this is one to look out for.

Domain of the Voord is the first of Big Finish’s ‘Early Adventures’ range. When BF announced a (temporary) end to the Companion Chronicles and the end of the Lost Stories range, they soon after revealed plans to start a new range featuring early era actors such as Carole Ann Ford and Frazer Hines. These were to be the Early Adventures which would be ‘full cast’ original stories. Not lost scripts, not one/two voice audiobooks; full cast stories featuring the 1st and 2nd Doctors.

It was an idea that intrigued me but limited funds mean I can’t sample every range Big Finish has to offer (and we all know, those ranges seem to be expanding at an exponential rate). However, courtesy of a friend of mine, I managed to borrow this first entry of the series, neatly adding into the Voordiverse seen inThe Keys of Marinus, The World Shapers and Daleks vs Voord, among other stories.

Domain of the Voord is set 100 years or so after The Keys of Marinus and finds the TARDIS crew pitching up on Waterworld (the very Nationy-named planet, Hydra) to find the Voord have already conquered the planet. The story is simple – the Doctor and friends set about liberating the Hydrans from Voord rule. What author Andrew Smith has done here is use a simple plot – fitting for the era this is supposedly part of – to explore and develop an underwritten alien race.

Many of the alien races introduced after the Daleks entered a world of publicity trying to recreate the popularity of the Skarosian mutants. The Voord, being Nation creations, must have seemed like a prime candidate. Newspapers published pictures of Carole Ann Ford being menaced by a rubber-suited denizen and the Voord appeared in the first Doctor Who annual. However, aside from the Dalek vs Voord cigarette cards, they failed to return to the world of Doctor Who until the aforementioned World Shapers (where they were linked with a far more successful Doctor Who monster). The Voord didn’t set the world on fire.

From their TV appearance it isn’t hard to see why. They hardly appear in The Keys of Marinus; only in the opening and closing episodes. They are more or less presented simply as men in rubber suits, the implication being that they are protection against the acid seas surrounding the island. The strange antennae on their masks seem mere decoration and they are terribly ungainly flopping around in their flippered feet. They are defeated rather easily.

Smith takes a badly-realised alien and makes them threatening, sinister, horrific and credible. He even manages to suggest that The World Shapers continuity-shattering evolution revelation may well be true. The Voord have already won when the story begins. Survivors sail the watery planet in a flotilla of ships providing some vivid, and relatively unusual, opening images – the crew aboard a boat doesn’t happen often (Enlightenment, Carnival of Monsters is all I can think of – even including Big Finish I can only add Transit of Venus). The Voord are now a credible threat. When Smith goes on to add details about the mask we enter the world of horror. The Voord ‘convert’ people to their race but only if they are willing. They are given a choice of becoming a Voord or slavery. Anyone taking the mask out of a desire to avoid slavery is killed by the mask. They must truly want to wear it! There are ‘pure’ Voord (of the ‘blood tree’) but they seem few and far between. This element of conversion ties them in with the Cybermen providing a neat link to The World Shapers – I cannot believe this is coincidental ; Smith is a fan and is probably aware of the comic strip. Having people willingly join the Voord adds some moral drama to proceedings and Smith also gives the Voord the power of telepathy.

At four episodes, Domain of the Voord is exactly the right length. In trying to emulate this era of Doctor Who, six episode stories seem more common (The Masters of Luxor, Farewell, Great Macedon, The Dark Planet). I know these are ‘lost’ stories based on original scripts and submissions but six episodes can often seem too much and didn’t always produce the most thrilling of stories on TV either. Had Domain of the Voord be stretched over six episodes it would have been a bit dull. For starters the plot is, as I’ve said, fairly simple, but with the added fact that the Doctor and Barbara are removed from the story for most of the episodes 2 and 3, it would have seemed silly if they’d been gone for even longer.

Historically it is stated this is 100 years after The Keys of Marinus and explicit reference is made to Yartek’s group and their mission. As I’ve said, the extrapolation of the Voord race fits neatly in between Keys and The World Shapers. The Early Adventures are a combination of full cast and narration. The absence of Hartnell and Hill makes full cast impossible and I’m not sure this format works completely in covering those key roles. The Companion Chronicles work because they are single voice (more or less). Lost Stories work because we invest in the half and half approach because we know there is no other way of bringing us these stories. I’m not 100% convinced that writing brand new adventures for actors who are no longer with us and requiring those who are to ‘impersonate’ them really works as well.

However, it was an enjoyable story and I really liked the way the Voord were developed as a race.

The Highlanders is an odd tale.  It doesn’t feel like it fits into any particular era of the show.  It’s a historical produced when the production team had decided they weren’t popular enough to be worth producing.  It’s a story with Jamie where he is nothing like the Jamie we know and love.  It’s a Troughton story without a recognisable Troughton Doctor.

I’m never quite sure what I think about The Highlanders.  It was probably one of the last stories I experienced when it was finally released as an audio soundtrack.  The story itself has never made much of an impression on me, even though I’ve probably listened to it 3 or 4 times (and watched a reconstruction).  This time, as part of my marathon, some of my opinions have crystallised and I can see why I seem to have a problem with it.
The principal issue for me is Patrick Troughton.  Don’t get me wrong – I love the 2nd Doctor and Troughton’s performance.  When I did my chronological marathon a few years back, Troughton probably became my favourite Doctor (although I find that a hard ranking to make a final decision on) pushing Peter Davison off the top spot (Matt Smith is now making a good job of budging Troughton down to Number 2).

But Patrick Troughton’s Doctor is hardly in The Highlanders because he spends 90% of the time putting on silly accents and dressing up.  Now, I know that early in production, the dressing up aspect was something which was being tried out as a ‘characteristic’ of this version of the Doctor – probably in a desperate attempt to make him seem different to Hartnell.  To be fair, I think we can forgive the production team, and Troughton, for not really knowing what to do.  Changing a lead actor in this way was unprecedented and I can imagine numerous meetings and discussions about how to continue the series in this way and whether viewers would even accept it.As it is, though, Troughton’s performance isn’t great.  I particularly don’t like the German doctor stuff, which seems too cartoony and silly.  I also don’t like some of the scripting, such as the Doctor’s sudden violence towards Perkins when he bangs his head on the table – twice!

I know the dressing up continues into the next story, The Underwater Menace but Troughton’s version of the Doctor starts to take a clearer shape in that story and by The Moonbase and The Macra Terror, I think he had it pretty much nailed.

Something else I don’t like about this story is how utterly vile Polly is in the first episode.  She is an absolute cow to Hannah Gordon’s Kirsty McLaren and thank goodness she modifies her attitude later on in the story because I may have wanted to give her a good slap if she carried on.  Fortunately, the rest of the story proves to be a strong one for Polly.  Unusually for the female companion she doesn’t spend much of the story in peril, but is actually actively pursuing ways of rescuing the Doctor and Ben.  I do like how she basically uses her sexuality to manipulate Ffinch for her own ends.  It’s always struck me as odd that Polly and Ben were considered, for a long time, to be useless companions.  I remember a cartoon from the long ago days of Tim Quinn and Dicky Howett where there was a gag along the lines of ‘we couldn’t get the ‘useless companions’ we wanted to open some event…but Polly and Ben more than fill their place.  I think the fact that most of their stories are missing from the archives has really done Polly and Ben a disservice because, more often than not, both prove to be really strong characters in many of their stories.

The plot of The Highlanders I also find a little odd.  There is a point in the final episode where I realised that none of the regulars were in jeopardy.  Polly hadn’t been in danger for much of the story anyway, the Doctor had escaped from Trask and Grey and even Ben had managed to get off the ship where he had been held captive.  All three had managed this without help from any of the others.  It is only their compassion that means they hang around to rescue the remaining Scots aboard the Annabelle, due to be sold as slaves in the Americas.  In terms of interfering with history it flies right in the face of what the Hartnell era had established – who is to say that those Scots shouldn’t have been sold as slaves and what damage the TARDIS crew did to the timelines by rescuing them.

Of course, this is because The Highlanders isn’t really concerned with history, but more with telling a ripping yarn in the vein of Kidnapped.  This is a similar ‘history’ to The Smugglers – much more influenced by modern interpretations of history than historical fact.  The difference between The Smugglers and The Highlanders and earlier historical tales such as The Massacre or even Marco Polo, is obvious.  This is a tale concerned more with obvious villains such as Solicitor Grey (a bedfellow of the Squire from The Smugglers) and Trask (who would probably enjoy a drink with Cherub and Red Jaspar (from Doctor Who and the Pirates) who are ultimately defeated by the honourable and worthy Highlanders, loyal and true to the last man standing.

There are a few historical facts scattered throughout to set the scene, though.  The story opens in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden.  Mentions are made of Bonnie Prince Charlie and King George.  And of course, there are the Redcoats and the Highlanders.The Highlanders themselves don’t make a huge impact.  Colin spends most of the time in a state of near collapse.  Kirsty gets pushed around by Polly.  Alexander cops it before the first episode is out (which is something I always forget – I always think he lasts a lot longer).  And then of course, there is James Robert McCrimmon.  Jamie is nothing like the slightly bumbling, loyal, slightly dim, ever so slightly lecherous companion we all know and love.  Frazer Hines’ performance has ‘historical guest cast’ written all over it.  It’s not even particularly convincing at the end when he suddenly appears to help the Doctor, Polly and Ben return to the TARDIS and then accepts their offer to join them.  It belies the fact that his addition to the regulars was a last minute decision as ‘planned’ companions have far more hints around their character and their interaction with the regulars.  Jamie hardly spends any time with the Doctor and practically no time at all with Polly (and she’s the one taking him by the hand and leading him into the TARDIS!).  Of course, it was the best decision they ever made and Frazer Hines’ Jamie is rightly considered one of the great companions.  It’s just that his beginnings are so different to what we are used to from the rest of the Troughton era.

It isn’t that I think The Highlanders is a bad story.  It just isn’t a very good Troughton story or, for that matter, a very good historical.  There are enough good performances and fun scenes to keep the interest, but as a whole it just doesn’t seem to go anywhere.  Were this period of history visited now on TV or by Big Finish, or were it to have featured in a Past Doctor novel, you can guarantee that Bonnie Prince Charlie wouldn’t be off screen for the entire story, or that the Battle of Culloden wouldn’t be represented by a few sound effects, but that was the nature of the direction the series was going in at the time.

Persuasion involves a superweapon created by a Nazi scientist called Schalk being pursued by more than just Earthly nations but also by extraterrestrials. It also sees beings from another universe entering ours and the Doctor co-opting the services of Elizabeth Klein in investigating the device and its creator.

Persuasion has a lot going on but it takes a while for the disparate parts to come together. The super beings from another dimension, the Shepherd and Shepherdess, are tangential to the story for a fair while before influencing human characters as angels may in myths and legends. They are a difficult aspect to get a handle on due to being the sort of all-powerful, amoral beings that Doctor Who often loves to include but can’t always satisfactorily develop. To be honest, these two are a bit too similar to the Elder Gods, the Guardians and the Eternals to really be particuarly interesting (although the performances of Paul Chahadi and Miranda Raison are excellent).

This is one of those audios which maintain interest throughout but, afterwards, you’re hard pressed to actually remember a lot of the plot. Schalk has a terrible super weapon which behaves a bit like the Conscience of Marinus (and this time round the Doctor thinks its a bad thing, unlike in that story where he actively helps a man who wants to control the thoughts of an entire planet…..). Various aliens want the device (including the Sontarans apparently – they’re not in this story which is a shame because, despite BF’s arguable overuse of them, they might have made it more interesting).

The overriding take-away from this story, though, are the characters of Klein and Will Arrowsmith. The Doctor turns up at UNIT and basically tricks Klein into joining him in the TARDIS. Unknown to both of them, Will stows away and ends up challenging Jeremy Fitzoliver for the crown of ‘most ill-judged and annoying companion ever’. And that’s the problem with this story – Will overshadows everything about it. I’m writing this review a good couple of months since listening to the story and I don’t have much to comment on aside from Will.

He is terrible. I’m sure that Christian Edwards is a perfectly good actor, but this is basically Jeremy Fitzoliver 2.0 – he’s stereotypically posh, stereotypically useless in the field, stereotypically annoying. Is he supposed to be these things? If he is then the writer, actor and director have absolutely nailed it -but why would you want such a character in your story. If he isn’t meant to be like that, then at what point do the creative team step in and say ‘hold on a minute, maybe we should tone this down’.

Will thoroughly weakens the character of Klein too. Klein is a complicated character – alternate versions and all that, but giving her a ill-judged ‘sidekick’ does nothing to lighten the character or give Tracey Childs a chance to develop Klein in any sort of interesting way (which is a shame after the way the character was developed in her first ‘return’ trilogy).

There is also some mildly amusing business with an alien race called the Klecht who are like a company who goes around buying out other species so that they can eventually get what they want (in this case, the Persuasion machine).

But overall, this is an audio which has a lot of elements, none of which gel in a particularly satisfying way. This may be because, ultimately, the situation with Schalk and the machine is resolved at the end of the trilogy of releases (this is followed by Starlight Robbery (with the Sontarans) and Daleks Among Us) but neither of those are necessarily satisfying continuations or endings of the arc – or of Klein and Will’s time aboard the TARDIS.

As part of their Lost Stories range, Big Finish released a story written by Brian Hayles which serves as a sequel to The Celestial Toymaker.

I’m a champion of The Celestial Toymaker; I enjoy what my imagination extrapolates from what is on screen.  Much has been written about Brian Hayles’s original intentions for the story involving the characters of George and Margaret.  The final version of The Celestial Toymaker was, apparently, quite different from his original plans.

However, on the basis of The Queen of Time, he can’t have been too unenamoured with the final version.   The Queen of Time is an almost beat for beat retread of The Celestial Toymaker, but this time with a female villain who is obsessed with time rather than toys.  There’s also a generous dollop of The War Games with smatterings of The Mind Robber.

To be honest, I’m not sure how much of this was in Hayles’s original outline and how much has been added by the adapter/writer Catherine Harvey or whoever script-edited the range at this time (I think it was John Dorney).  Whichever way, it ends up being a story which feels too familiar to be thrilling and ends up committing the same sins that people dislike about The Celestial Toymaker – sins I cannot defend a second time around.

Let’s start with the positives, though.  Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury are great narrators and performers.  Occasionally I find Frazer’s Patrick Troughton impersonation to be a bit distracting – more focussed on the verbal tics than an actual performance.  In this audio, though, he pitches it just right and there were quite a few occasions where I forgot it was Frazer and not Patrick.  Wendy Padbury too seems better at pitching her voice for the younger Zoe, sounding less squeaky than she has done in other releases.

The games that Jamie and Zoe are forced to play have some fun elements and there is much more for the Doctor to do in this story than the first Doctor had to do in The Celestial Toymaker.  The disgusting three course meal he is forced to endure is gloriously described in the narration and there is a fun sequence (highly reminiscent of The War Games) where he is engaged in a battle of oneupmanship against Hecuba – the eponymous Queen of Time – pitting ever increasingly destructive forms of weaponry against each other.  His solution for ending the conflict is very Doctorish.

Catherine Faber, as Hecuba, isn’t given a huge amount to do but she takes what she has a gives it a glossy sheen of female villainy.  Hecuba is good enough as a villain to rub shoulders with Lady Adrasta, Vivien Fay and even the Rani.  I like the idea of her movie star-like appearance and attitude.  It might have even been better for her to have an American accent as she is described in the narration as being like a glamorous Hollywood star from the Golden Age – a Lauren Bacall style figure.

But, three performances of four characters isn’t enough to save this from being too similar in structure to The Celestial Toymaker and therefore falling into the same pitfalls without the saving graces I find in the previous story.  Principal among these is that Jamie and Zoe’s tasks are not against anyone.  There is some interaction with Hecuba’s ‘guard dogs’ Snap and Dragon but as they are non-speaking it doesn’t amount to much.  There are some fun ideas in the games, such as Zoe being aged forwards and backwards, but as the solution relies on Jamie whacking different buttons it isn’t very thrilling – it smacked, almost, of a subpar Crystal Maze game; as did the labyrinth they find themselves stuck in and the first game where they have to identify a particular clock among thousands of others.  However, without having opponents – as Steven and Dodo do in The Celestial Toymaker – the games are less engaging.  The Toymaker’s playthings are a huge factor as to why I enjoy that story.  The untold story of the Heart family, Cyril, Rugg and Wigg and Clara and Joey intrigues me.  Are they alive?  Were they people who lost games to the Toymaker?  Are they self-aware?  What would happen if they won?  The Queen of Time has none of this intriguing back story.

The link with Celestial Toymaker is also kept vague throughout the story with Hecuba almost revealing who she is a couple of times, only for the script to divert elsewhere before the revelation.  What we get is a half-hearted – oh, yes, she must be the Toymaker’s sister – tagged on the end of the story.  More could have been made of this pantheon of manipulative super beings, either by Hayles originally, or by Big Finish in expanding the limited outline they started from.

The Doctor’s final defeat of Hecuba does mirror his defeat of the Toymaker but is satisfying in its own way.  However, after four episodes of fairly repetitive story (I hesistate to use the word, plot, because there is very little of that) it almost serves as more of a merciful release than a successful denouement.

I don’t hate this story, but for people who don’t like The Celestial Toymaker, this story is not going to appeal as it is – to all intents and purposes – the same story with a slightly different theme.

The first series of Big Finish’s Lost Stories range concluded with this story from the writer team of Tony Rudlin and Ingrid Pitt – yes, that Ingrid Pitt. Ingrid ‘Queen Gallelia and Doctor Solow’ Pitt. Ingrid ‘karate chop a Myrka’ Pitt.

It’s more or less the most interesting thing about this story because, otherwise, it’s a very run of the mill ordinary Doctor Who story.

The 6th Doctor and Peri arrive aboard a ship but just like the first episode of The Space Museum, no one can see or hear them. The crew also seem to be in a time loop and the ship itself is covered in a strange green rust. It is revealed, fairly early on, that the ship is the USS Eldridge – the infamous ship at the centre of The Philadelphia Experiment, an alleged attempt to develop the facility of invisibility to the Allied war effort in 1943.

Here is the kernel of a fascinating Doctor Who story – a classic example of Doctor Who explaining a real life mystery. The USS Eldridge disappeared and was never seen again – although the official story was that the ship had been renamed and given to the Greek Navy. Unfortunately, The Macros, squanders this premise and instead shifts the story to a generic alien world with a generic dictator and generic world-invading ambitions.

The world of Capron with its mad, dictator Presidenta Osloo is such a pointless waste of story it just frustrates every time the action shifts there. The disintegrating Eldridge and the two characters aboard who haven’t been stuck in the time loop – the Bosun and Professor Tessler (responsible for the experiment itself) are constantly shunted to the sidelines so we can spend time with the thoroughly boring Presidenta, her generic stepson and his rebellious girlfriend. To be fair, the cast make the very best of what they are given and Linda Marlowe is suitably scenery-chewing as Osloo but the plot is just so dull it really does make me wonder why they couldn’t have thought of something more interesting to do with the Eldridge plot.

The extras reveal that the reasons for this may have been two-fold. Firstly, this was a last minute replacement for the planned finale of the season, the fabled The Children of January. Secondly, the original script was lost in a hard drive crash. It seems that this story was rewritten ‘from memory’. I wonder if Rudlin and Pitt could only remember the bare bones of the two parallel plots and ended up leaning into the simpler, more straightforward ‘mad dictator’ plot rather than the intriguing ‘solving a historical mystery’ plot. It’s a real shame.

Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant, are really good of course, and this audio seems to be working towards softening the relationship which seemed to leap in dynamics on screen between Season 22 and 23.

Historically, the Philadelphia Experiment is an interesting mystery. Based on the alleged observations of merchant sailor, Carl M Allen, it is an event denied outright ever happened by the US Navy. The alleged event involved not only the USS Eldridge being made invisible for a short time, but it also being teleported briefly before returning to the harbour. The actual story around the USS Eldridge is fascinating with elements of conspiracy theory, Einstein’s unified field theory and sailors being melded with the ship after teleport! There is so much story in the mystery of the Eldridge and The Macros just uses them as a backdrop.

Even the mildly interesting element of Capron being in a micro-universe is never explored much beyond the Doctor having to do some macguffiny TARDIS stuff to ‘adjust’ people as they travel between the two worlds which seems to solely be to provide a cliffhanger to Episode 1. It isn’t even used as a way of incapacitating Osloo when she travels to the Eldridge. The Doctor has the prime opportunity to not adjust her body to the new universe which would have stopped her right in her mad, generic tracks. But he doesn’t and she just goes outside to rant and rave a bit before they all have to return to the TARDIS because the Eldridge is disintegrating.

There’s also a little side trip to Washington in 1943 which ends up being a dead end, plotwise, which again could have been quite interesting. The inability of the Doctor to return the Professor and Bosun to their own time does add some tension but the ultimate solutions for them didn’t really work for me. The Professor is betrayed by Osloo after she promises him sanctuary and dominion if he helps her invasion attempt. Unsurprisingly she reneges on her word and he ends up dead. The Bosun, bizarrely, ends up in a retread of the conclusion to The Leisure Hive, alongside Osloo herself.

There are many parts of The Macros that could make an interesting and absorbing Doctor Who adventure but in this script none of them gel and the most interesting parts end up treading water on the sidelines until the characters briefly spend some time in them. Historically, the details are thin on the ground and beyond being told this is 1943 and the brief visit to Washington there isn’t really a great sense of time and space.

Frustrating.

A fun little murder mystery aboard a replacement shuttle service.  John Barrowman and Camille Coduri bounce well off each other and the concept of an alien race extrapolated from the fact no one looks or talk to each other on the tube is a cute conceit.  The slightly camp robot driver is also good value and certainly had a bit of a Red Dwarf vibe.  Worth a listen.

The 8th Doctor is now travelling with Liv Chenka, Molly O’Sullivan having, apparently, been returned home by the Time Lords.  Seeking to find their old friend, they have arrived in London, 1921, and are trying to have a bit of a respite from their recent troubles.  Liv is staying at the Ritz Hotel courtesy of the Doctor whilst he tries to track down Molly.  His first port of call is the home of Kitty Donaldson, an alternative version of whom he met in 1914 when he first met Molly.  Molly is not there, but the Doctor is introduced to Kitty’s brother, Martin.  Martin is a survivor of the Great War although he lost a leg in the conflict.  The Doctor is intrigued to find that time is in flux around Martin.

Before he discovers this, though, the Doctor has already set Liv and Martin up on a bit of a date.  When he does realise the danger, though, much of the story involves the Doctor and Kitty trying to track Martin and Liv down as they enjoy their day out around London.  Added trouble comes from a group of androids who are attempting to capture the TARDIS.

Paul McGann is on top form as the Doctor.  The quiet tragedy of much of Dark Eyes seems to have momentarily passed and he is back to his bouncy, loveable, irritating self.  Even when being chased down by killer androids, everything still feels fun.  There’s a great sequence at the Ritz as he realises that something is amiss with the receptionist and his interplay with Kitty (who becomes this episodes ersatz companion whilst Liv is enjoying her day out with Martin) is natural and endearing.

Beth Chalmers plays Kitty.  Chalmers tends to get a raw deal from BF fans on the forums as she is an actress who pops up all over the place doing a variety of small roles – and of course originated the role of Raine, the 7th Doctor’s ‘lost’ companion.  A bit like with Nicholas Briggs, it is merely her ubiquity which draws negativity because, as an actress I find her perfectly pleasant.  She is suited to the ‘posh’ roles and it’s a shame this is her only proper outing with McGann as Kitty (they don’t really interact much in The Great War) because, as I say, their interplay is fun.

Nicola Walker is one of those coups that Big Finish so often gets.  She is an actress who appears in quite a few prestigious dramas on television and has a public profile far outside of a niche company such as Big Finish.  To have her play Liv Chenka once as a guest star in the 7th Doctor story Robophobia, was exciting but to have her return for such a long run as the character throughout not just Dark Eyes, but the Doom Coalition and now Ravenous story arcs, is quite something.  And she’s brilliant.  She’s dour and wounded by her experiences, but she’s also seeking something better – not just for herself but for humanity.  Her friendship with the Doctor is an interesting one as, having listened to the whole Dark Eyes saga and the first box set of Doom Coalition, I’m not convinced she actually ‘likes’ the Doctor all that much.  I often get the impression she sees him as a means to an end.  She survived by herself for a long time without the Doctor, facing up to the horrors being perpetrated by the Daleks (she often reminds me a little of Susan Mendes from the Dalek Empire series).  As such, she is under no illusions about how horrific and hard the universe can be.  But, being with the Doctor means she can make more of a difference than she could by herself.

Here, in this story, she cannot quite bring herself to ‘let her hair down’.  As Martin shows her around London she agrees to his suggestions for activities but with a slight ‘whatever you want’ attitude rather than a genuine enthusiasm for experiencing a time and place far, far removed from her own (let’s remember that her home time and place is Kaldor).

A key sequence in this story is a trip to the cinema.  Martin takes Liv to see a Buster Keaton movie and much is made of Liv not really understanding the humour of this style of entertainment but eventually getting into it, more through Martin’s infectious enthusiasm than anything else.  She is wanting to see the good in people, wanting to see that life can have joy.  In a way, Liv and Martin have both emerged from horrific conflicts and there is an unspoken bond between them, I think, because of this.

Walker also brings some real emotion to the final scenes displaying grief and confusion at the sacrifice of a man who gives his life to save hers despite – as far as she is aware – only having known her for a day.

And herein lies the crux of the story.  The time anomaly detected by the Doctor turns out to be a time loop that only Martin is trapped in.  Consequently he has been living the same day over and over again.  Every day he meets Liv and takes her on a tour of London, doing different things each day.  This is how his love for Liv has grown and partly why, although she doesn’t remember their previous days, she forms such a close bond with him so quickly.  Intriguing details from the episode begin to make sense as it becomes clear that Martin is trying to lead events to the point where he can best save the lives of the Doctor and Liv.  He reveals that he has tried many ways but they have all ended with him dying and re-awaking back at the start of the day.  But this is no Groundhog Day comedy escapade.  There is a real tragedy in Martin’s predicament and a melancholy in the way he has attemped to make the best of his strange life.  A Life in the Day.

This is a story which rewards relistening as Martin’s slightly strange reactions to the Doctor and Liv begin to make more sense and the clever plotting is clearer.

The only weak link, for me, are the killer androids.  Very little background is given to these enemies but they are merely a plot device – the reason for the time loop.  This is a four-hander between the Doctor, Liv, Martin and Kitty and, as such, it is hugely successful.  The Dark Eyes saga has its up and downs and, being so Dalek-centric, is never going to top my personal polls but in between the ranting metal pepper pots and the machinations of the Master are these individual episodes which shine.  Indeed, The Day in the Life is so tangentially connected to the whole arc that it easily works as a standalone.  It’s just a shame it has to be bought as a set (a discussion for another day, maybe).

Historically, we find the Great War continuing to cast a shadow over Great Britain despite having ended three year prior.  Martin is affected by his experiences in ways it is difficult for people who haven’t lived through such conflict to understand.  But his experiences seem to be what drive him to deal with his strange circumstances with the grit, determination and continual self-sacrifice that he does.

But contrasting against this darkness is the sequence at the cinema.  Just as with Harry Houdini’s profile in this era, we see a world trying to turn away from it’s grief and build a new world – particularly in Great Britain and the USA.  Already in Young Indiana Jones we witnessed jazz, Broadway and the ‘Silver Screen’ and here we have Martin and Liv watching a Buster Keaton movie.

Keaton, like Houdini, is a high profile ‘celebrity’ of this era.  His films were hugely popular and, even today, he is remembered as a star.  Coincidentally, my family and I recently visited a Steam Fairground in Surrey which has a ‘Bioscope’ which shows old silent movies.  Although this time it was clearly being run from a DVD (they do it properly with a piano and film at special times) the Buster Keaton film they showed fully entertained my 10 year old son, as well as the rest of the audience.  His style of slapstick humour and hugely dangerous stunts continues to appeal to people around 100 years since they were made.  That’s quite some achievement.

From the details given by Martin and Liv when discussing the film, it would seem to be that they watch The Goat.  This was released in May 1921 and involved Keaton’s character continually escaping the long arm of the law after being mistaken for an escaped criminal – Deadshot Dan (who appears in a number of Keaton films including the one my family saw recently).

A Life in the Day is an excellent story, with great performances, which slots effortlessly into this era and the way these stories reflect how the world, at this time, was changing.  The next story, The Monster of Montmatre is an unusual follow-up in that it was the subsequent story in the fourth Dark Eyes box set (which starts with A Life in the Day) so therefore also features the 8th Doctor and Liv.  But not only that, but it is also set in 1921, although this time in Paris.

Doctor Who writers do love a juxtaposition.  Taking two very different ideas and ramming them together can make for many an interesting story.

In The Monster of Montmartre, Matt Fitton has taken that Doctor Who staple – the Daleks and shoved them into the Moulin Rouge.  Two concepts that really shouldn’t work together but, because its Doctor Who, it does and its huge fun.

Daleks in a historical setting is always fun – The Evil of the Daleks Victoriana; The Dalek’s Masterplan/The Chase’s timehopping exploits; Victory of the Daleks Ironsides.  On audio, the Daleks appearances in history have been few and far between which, considering how often Big Finish seem to use them, is a bit strange.

But Daleks in Paris, 1921 is great fodder for a story.  Fitton has gone with big ideas here.  It’s always more interesting to have the Daleks on the back foot.  Here, the Time Controller Dalek has fallen through time to 1921.  He is desperately trying to create Daleks to reassert his dominance and save himself and as such has ‘married’ the owner of the Red Pagoda (a nightclub which has replaced the Moulin Rouge) – Madame du Temps.  She is, in reality, a Dalek duplicate, but the whole concept of this marriage of convenience is darkly hilarious.

Alongside this, Madame du Temps is providing the Time Controller with people to turn into Daleks by enticing penniless artists with her womanly wiles.  One such artist, Christian, befriends the Doctor before being taken and partly mutated into a Dalek before being rescued.

The most striking idea is that of the Red Pagoda itself.  Where the famous red windmill of the Moulin Rouge once stood is the Red Pagoda – something which resembles a silhouette familiar to the Doctor and Liv – a giant Dalek.  Inside the pagoda’s structure hides the Time Controller and his machinery.  He ascends the levels on a platform, whilst his human agents take the stairs.  It’s bizarre and satisfying at the same time.

The ‘monster of Montmartre’ aspect of the story is actually quite inconsequential.  Strange noises are heard at night on the streets of Paris, but it simply turns out to be the failed experiments of the Time Controller being disposed of.  Quite why it feels the need to do this out in the open rather than just destroy them in the privacy of the pagoda doesn’t really make sense to me but it allows the story to hark back to Spring-heeled Jack’ and similar legends so common the previous century (and indeed, our tour of Victorian times in this marathon).  That said, it’s a story element that’s abandoned fairly early on and doesn’t play a huge part in proceedings when it is there.  The focus is much more on the Doctor and Liv’s search for the missing TARDIS.

I like Liv immensely, but occasionally her dourness can grate.  There’s a few scenes in this story where she is getting information from a local gentlemanly crook.  There is far too much of Liv’s quiet sarcasm and it’s a relief when, later, Liv gets to be far more energetic and active when facing the Daleks.

I’m also not sure I’m a huge fan of the Time Controller.  The Daleks, in general, bore me a little and I do appreciate it when scripts try to do something a little different with them.  There are a couple of ‘prototype’ Daleks the Time Controller has managed to cobble together here which brought to mind the Heath Robinson Dalek from Resolution – although the TV one was far more deadly than these two who can hardly shoot in a straight line.  But the Time Controller doesn’t, for me, quite work.  He is too villainous, too eccentric to be a Dalek.  In a way he’s like a more Dalekified Davros.  He’s all manic glee and crazed insanity.  He comes across a little too like a poor man’s Davros.

The ‘Moulin Rouge’ part of this combination well-realised and definitely brought to mind the Baz Lurhman film.  The sound design in the scenes inside the club is excellent and evokes the hustle and hubbub of the filmic version.  Most striking to me was the use of music.  In the Lurhman film, modern music is juxtaposed with the period setting (songs such as Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend; Your Song; and Like a Virgin all feature) and it was that contrast that made the film so memorable (I’m a huge Lurhman fan, ever since Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge is one of my favourite films).  In The Monster of Montmartre, the music in the nightclub scenes definitely had a more modern feel and I’m sure I heard echoes of some of the film’s chosen songs.

The atmosphere of these scenes was spot on and the 8th Doctor, all Byronesque artistic style, fits in immediately and his very sudden friendship with penniless artist Christian (portrayed not dissimilarly to Ewan McGregor’s character from the film – also named Christian) is quite believable.  After the most ‘tiggery’ of Doctors had become strained by the events of previous Dark Eyes box sets, this story certainly sees his enthusiasm and energy return.  I think it’s also a mark of his developing friendship with Liv.

Whereas A Life in the Day - the previous story in this box set - was, aside from the stolen TARDIS, a self-contained adventure which could be enjoyed beyond the Dark Eyes saga, The Monster of Montmartre sets up the rest of the box set with the return of the Doctor’s oldest frenemy at the close of the adventure.  However, for a Dalek story, this for me still had a lot to enjoy and the Moulin Rouge setting is evocative and lifts the story beyond what could have been a fairly perfunctory story of stranded Daleks.

When I finished this book a few years ago I wrote the review after watching the first broadcast of Into the Dalek, the second episode of Series 8.  This adds an interesting dimension not mentioned in the reviews of Peter Capaldi’s first encounter with the Daleks.  A lot of reviews are citing the obvious influence of Robert Shearman’s Dalek on Into the Dalek, as well as The Invisible Enemy and, by association, Fantastic Voyage (along with Let’s Kill Hitler’s Tesselecta antibodies).  However, I’ve yet to see any commentator mention the parallels between Into the Dalek and Prisoner of the Daleks.  Both feature a lone Doctor stumbling across a group of hardened soldiers/mercenaries who have captured a Dalek and are holding it prisoner.  The leader of the soldiers doesn’t like the Doctor at all and only tolerates him due to the protestation of another soldier/mercenary, a female, whose trust in the Doctor develops and increases through the course of the story.The similarities more or less end there, but it was striking that the images of the prone Dalek in Into the Dalek were not a million miles away from the visualisation I had in mind when reading similar sections in Prisoner of the Daleks.

I chose this novel on recommendation and probably against my natural inclination.  I’m not a massive fan of the Daleks but felt I wanted to include them in an anniversary book marathon I was working through at the time, which, after all, was designed as a celebration of the 50th anniversary.  I’m rather glad I did as it was a rather good read.

It begins with the Doctor becoming trapped in a room on a deserted planet, only to be released by a group of Dalek hunters.  Before long, the Daleks have arrived and in the ensuing battle, one of the hunters is killed and a Dalek taken prisoner.  Torturing the Dalek leads to information which leads the Doctor and the hunters to the Arkheon Threshold and the possibility that the Daleks are attempting to access the time vortex and wipe humans from history.

David Tennant’s 10th Doctor is well written by Baxendale and his trademark catchphrases ( e.g. Sorry,…I’m so sorry) are present and correct.  But it’s more than that.  The characterisation fits the situation perfectly and the Doctor reacts believably to the situation he is in, which, to be fair, is extraordinary in terms of the TV series.  He is effectively stranded with the bounty hunters, powerless to prevent them torturing the Dalek, tricked into following the Dalek’s dying words and a cavalcade of other horrific events.  The Doctor’s initial impotence in influencing the people he is stuck with and the manner in which the bounty hunters trust in the Doctor is immensely hard-earned is highly reminiscent of the interplay between the characters in the TV episode, Midnight.

The supporting characters are clearly defined and work well as an ensemble.  From what I know of the other solo 10th Doctor novels, he is often paired up with a temporary companion, in the vein of the TV specials’ one-off companions such as Jackson Lake, Christina de Souza, Astrid Peth and Kazran Sardick.  Prisoner of the Daleks is unusual in that no character really fulfils this role.  Stella is the closest and she is murdered by the Daleks within a few chapters.  Even Koral, a feline alien with killer claws, whose trust in the Doctor grows as the story progresses, never really fits into the companion role.

There are some horrific set pieces in this novel which emphasise the period of future history it is set in.  The human-Dalek war is grim.  The massacre of refugees from a destroyed planet; the slaves bonded in small groups who are killed as a group if even one of them is considered weak; the mother and daughter who the Doctor tries to save but can only succeed in having them returned to slavery instead of execution.  It isn’t the most cheerful of books.  That said, the Doctor manages to create an air of hope which does begin to influence the other characters, particularly Jon Bowman, the leader of bounty hunters.The appearance later in the book of Dalek X, a feared interrogator, adds a shot of adrenaline to the final third and this culminates in a very exciting denouement with the Doctor chased through the tunnels on the planet he originally arrived on.

I really did enjoy reading this, despite its slightly harrowing subject matter, it ranks as one of the better novels.

Oh my! I am a champion for unloved stories in Doctor Who’s long and patchy history. My favourite story is, hand on heart, Delta and the Bannermen. I love Paradise Towers; quite like The Web Planet; think Time-Flight is unfairly maligned and find loads to enjoy in The Monster of Peladon.

The Time Monster has defeated me. The scripting, acting, direction, costume, effects, everything…is simply bad.

The story starts in modern England (although I have included the whole story here in my marathon simply for the Atlantis sections). Here we meet Stuart Hyde and Ruth Ingram – two of the most poorly acted scientist types in Doctor Who. Ian Collier, who would go on to being actually quite good in stories such as Arc of Infinity and the Big Finish audios Omega and Death to the Daleks (as Bernice Summerfield’s father Isaac), presents us with Stuart ‘Dodgy Face Hair’ Hyde. He bumbles around every scene he is in trying to be hip and hilarious. He screams ‘the 70s’ and wears the most hideous clothes ever seen on a ‘normal’ character. Ruth Ingram, played by Wanda Moore, is presented as a feminist – fed up with men ruling the world – despite the fact she spends most of the episode having to be convinced by Stuart to go against the instructions of Professor Thascales (or as we know him – the Master).

Later in the story these two are joined by the usually reliable John Levene as Sergeant Benton. Clearly sensing the standard of acting on display around him, Levene lowers his bar fairly low and then ends up being turned into a baby, only to be rewarded with one of the worst last lines in Who history.

But even Stuart, Ruth and Benton cannot hold a candle to the lack of talent on display in the Atlantis scenes. From the brief interludes in the first few episodes to the full-blown extravanganza of Episodes 5 and 6, we are subjected to some of the worst acting on British television, let alone Doctor Who.

Heading up the Atlantean cast is George Cormack as King Dalios. Of all this merry band, Cormack is the strongest. He does actually have some good scenes with Roger Delgado, particularly the one where the Master fails to hypnotise the ancient Dalios. But when Cormack has to work with the likes of Ingrid Pitt and, worst of all, Aidan Murphy as Hippias, he is dragged down to their level in much the same way John Levene is with the scientists.

Aidan Murphy is, quite simply, terrible. It’s been a while since I’ve watched The Mutants which features one of Doctor Who’s other most risible performances – Rick James as Cotton – but I think Aidan Murphy deserves the accolade as worst Doctor Who acting performance ever. Literally every word he speaks is at the same slightly strange high pitch with no expression and accompanied by awkward movements or odd facial expressions. The worst scene is the one between Hippias and Gallilea which is clearly supposed to be full of sexual tension (the implication being that Hippias and Gallilea have been having an affair) but Murphy says each line as if he has just remembered it or someone is prompting him in a hidden ear piece.

Ingrid Pitt adds nothing to this story. Famous as she is for her Hammer Horror performances I have never seen the attraction that made her such a popular performer in the 1970s. As Queen Gallilea she is sultry and exotic but that’s about it – and her later turn as Doctor Solow in Warriors of the Deep does nothing to convince me otherwise about her talents.

The other main Atlantean is Krasis, the high priest who is kidnapped by the Master early in the story and then spends the rest of the adventure standing behind Roger Delgado and occasionally spouting the odd line. I can’t even remember why the Master needs Krasis as, from what I can tell, he never serves a useful function to anyone for the whole story. Even when they arrive in Atlantis, Krasis’ support of the Master’s claim to be from the Gods lasts all of two minutes as Dalios sees straight through him. Gallilea is clearly not convinced either – she just fancies him!

The story is buoyed a little by the performances of the regular cast – particularly Katy Manning and the ever reliable Roger Delgado, but these are too little too late to save the story, particularly bearing in mind the terrible dialogue even the regulars have to spout. How can anyone take an evil genius like the Master serious when he is claiming the scientific marvels of machine called TOMTIT!

What we do see of the legendary Atlantis is not very inspiring. Studio bound for most of its time on screen – save for the temple and labyrinth scenes on film – it is populated by bad actors in dodgy eyeliner. There are lots of pretty columns and statues and grand wooden doors and Gallilea, amusingly, carries around a cat for much of the story (animals on screen seem to be a rarity in Doctor Who).

The temple of Kronos is impressive in size but is basically some columns, a raised dais and lots of black drapes. The labyrinth seems very, very small and has incredibly weak walls and very unconvincing mirrors (one of which results in the death of Hippias – so they’re not all bad). The Minotaur (a pre Darth Vader Dave Prowse) is actually quite an impressive head, only let down by the loin-clothed body below.

There is very little about Atlantean civilisation on display aside from their links to Kronos and everyone speaks in a cod-Shakespearean way that only actors being ‘ancient’ or historical are ever required to do.

The destruction of Atlantis is incredibly lack-lustre and poorly directed. Kronos hangs feebly from the ceiling, some masonry collapses – the extras fall asleep, the Master, the Doctor and Jo leave and Gallilea stands, head hanging, in long shot in the midst of the (and I use this word loosely) destruction.

After a brief sojourn in Kronos’ domain (where the squawking bird has suddenly become a member of Pan’s People) the Master escapes and the Doctor and Jo return to the laboratory to find the Brigadier having no idea about what’s happening (not a massive character development by this stage in the Pertwee era) and Benton without his clothes. Cue horrendous fake laughter!

There are some elements of The Time Monster which could, in any other context, be quite fun. The Master bringing things through history to battle the UNIT troops is quite entertaining and the cliffhanger where it looks as if Mike Yates may have been blown up by a doodlebug is effective. But, overall, The Time Monster is let down by bad scripting, poor performances and a general feeling of lack-lustreness.

Trouble in the Paradise is the sixth instalment of the Destiny of the Doctor audio series that BBC Audio released, in collaboration with Big Finish, for the 50th Anniversary.

I’ve listened to the previous five instalments and they have been a very entertaining bunch.  In terms of Big Finish, they are closest in style to their Companion Chronicles.  Each release is narrated by a relevant companion actor (with the exception of the 9th Doctor release) and so, in the case of Trouble in Paradise, we have Nicola Bryant performing as Peri.

Each story also has a second voice artist portraying a principal guest character.  For this story we have Cameron Stewart as Christopher Columbus – making this what the revived series often refers to as a ‘celebrity historical’.But Nev Fountain, this story’s writer, takes a very different tack to the revived series’ cavalcade of famous writers, monarchs and political figures.  With even Winston Churchill being presented as much more amiable than real history would suggest he actually was, the revived series has skewed towards showing famous historical figures as fun, open-minded and, in the case of Charles Dickens, the subject of a definite fan crush from the Doctor.

Christopher Columbus, on the other hand, is written as the most arrogant, unlikeable human Peri has ever had the misfortune to encounter on her travels.  There’s a lovely scene where Peri berates the Doctor for doing exactly what he does later in The Unquiet Dead – fawning over famous people.  She reminds him of his behaviour around George Stephenson and HG Wells and this draws a nice parallel between the 6th Doctor’s era and the revived series and shows how, actually, the hallmarks of the  ‘celebrity historical’ were already patented in the 80s (far more so that the way history and its main players had been presented during the Hartnell era).

So, Christopher Columbus is presented as a thoroughly horrible person.  He narrates his journal to the audience making disparaging comments about uncivilised natives (including the Doctor and Peri who he assumes are locals to the islands they are ‘discovering’) and Peri proceeds to give the Doctor a history lesson in what happened when Columbus did discover ‘the new world’ and how he treated the indigenous people.  There’s a lovely postscript too, after the Doctor and Peri have departed, where Columbus states confidently that he has discovered Japan – so poor were his navigation skills.

Much like the celebrity historicals of the revived series, Trouble in Paradise faces its historical figure off against an alien foe – this time a space buffalo.  The script slowly reveals details about the aliens which, initially, made me think we were about to get a sequel to The Daemons.  Even the voice given to the alien (also voiced by Cameron Stewart) is Azal-like.  However, this devil-like alien is of no relation to our church-destroying Pertwee era monster.  He is the leader of a race of aliens – the Bovine Herd – who, apparently, have existed on Earth since prehistoric times.  The last of his kind (at least, of sentiency) the hairy beast wishes to manipulate time to restore his race to greatness.  Rather convolutedly, his machinations are revealed to be why Peri exists!  The leader has used his technology to bring Columbus to the new world with the intention that they will wipe out the natives – who have been killing and eating his herd (the buffalo) meaning he can restore his race to greatness.  Without his plans, Europeans may never have come to America, and Peri might not have existed.

It’s all a bit silly and odd – although it is a script by Nev Fountain, so I’m not hugely surprised.  That said, though, it is entertaining and Nicola Bryant and Cameron Stewart bring it all to life brilliantly.  Nicola’s 6th Doctor impression has just the right amount of bombast to suggest Colin Baker’s performance and Stewart is clearly having a lot of fun as the intolerably smug Columbus; there’s a hilarious scene where Peri is falls overboard of Columbus’s ship and his response to the Doctor’s distress is to query innocently whether, in their culture, her drowning is considered a bad thing!

Historically we obviously have Columbus and his discovery of the new world (alien intervention notwithstanding) along with his inability to actually know where on earth he was.  Much of the action in the first part of the story occurs on the Santa Maria, Columbus’s ship and reference is made to his two smaller, accompanying ships, the Nina and the Pinta.  Peri highlights some of Columbus’s less attractive accomplishments including slavery and his violent treatment of the natives.

Despite an ever-so-slightly silly monster and a convoluted timey-wimey back story, this is a fun story bolstered by two good performances.  The brief cameos of the 11th Doctor in each instalment of this series are intriguing and I am looking forward to how it all fits together at the end of the series.

After so many years of the modern series, it’s quite a shock to watch this story, so early in both the lives of the 9th Doctor and Rose. I’ve probably watched it once since original broadcast and my fan-brain had filed both the 9th Doctor and Rose away as ‘fine but not great’.  The Unquiet Dead reminded me of how important Rose was to the early days of the ‘new series’ and also how great Christopher Eccleston was in the role. I think it’s all too easy to forget, with the juggernauts that were David Tennant and Matt Smith crashing through fandom’s, and the general public’s, collective consciousness, how pivotal Eccleston was to the success of the new series.

Eccleston is great in this story – full of joy, jokes, righteousness and fallibility. I haven’t been a big advocate of Eccleston remembering him as a fairly unlikeable Doctor and not one that chimed with other favourites of mine – Troughton, Davison and Smith. But rewatching this story was a small epiphany. I really liked his performance and the relationship with Billie Piper’s Rose. There were numerous lovely little bits; ‘I’ve changed by jumper; his embarrassment at landing in the wrong place; his excitement at the sound of screaming from the theatre; ‘I love a happy medium’; his smile when Rose is lambasting Sneed; his disappointment at his possible death in a cellar in Cardiff…so much stuff.

Billie Piper, too, is great as Rose. It’s easy to forget this was only her third story but she is a confident performer who doesn’t really put a foot wrong. Her relationship with the Doctor is convincing as are her reactions to arriving in the past, her disgust at the Doctor’s proposal to use people’s corpses as hosts for the Gelth and her compassion for Gwyneth.

It’s interesting to see the Doctor, effectively, getting it wrong. The Gelth’s deception plays on his guilt about the Time War – something which was still a huge mystery at this point; only three episodes into the new series. It’s intriguing that those mysteries which were set up about the Doctor in An Unearthly Child and which slowly revealed over 26 years of the original series are being echoed by the mysteries set up in Rose which have been revealed over the 7 seasons of the new series culminating in our first actual glimpse of the Time War in The Day of the Doctor. It’s almost like a condensed version of the original series overall character arc for the Doctor.

A central feature of The Unquiet Dead which is revisited in many of the Eccleston episodes is the conceit of the Doctor ‘making people help themselves/making people better humans’. It’s most focussed on Rose, obviously, but it also spreads to Gwyneth and Charles Dickens in this story; as well as Cathica in The Long Game; Nancy in The Empty Child; Margaret Slitheen in Boom Town; Lynda with a Y in Bad Wolf and of course, Mickey Smith. At the time, this was an aspect of the series I wasn’t keen on. I felt it meant the Doctor took too much of a back seat in the resolution of many of the episodes. This wasn’t the sort of character I wanted the Doctor to be. In hindsight, though, with six more series of ‘new Who’ to enjoy, it seems a more reasonable take on the character and I can see how it is a result of his guilt surrounding the Time War. With a bit of fan retcon, the arrival of the War Doctor gives a reason why the 9th Doctor may be less enthusiastic to be proactive in dangerous situations, preferring to let other people take the lead. The events of this adventure almost prove his point as he is wrong about the Gelth and his actions ultimately cause Gwyneth’s death. It’s not something which is specifically picked up on in later episodes, although maybe, in a later series, its something which would have had more repercussions in later episodes. The uncertain nature of whether the audience would take to this new Doctor Who probably restricted Russell T Davies’ ability to play with this slightly darker version of the Time Lord.

The tone of the story is very much Dickensian and not just because of the actual inclusion of Charles Dickens himself. Although we’ve been in the Victorian era for a while now, our actual visits to the Victorian England written about by Dickens have been limited somewhat to stories such as The Next Doctor and The Haunting of Thomas Brewster. The Unquiet Dead goes full on. A Christmas Carol is a strong influence; it’s set on Christmas Eve, there are ghosts; one even emerges from a door knocker as Dickens watches. Gatiss, in the commentary, states that it was an unintentional echo to have Dickens fulfillling the Scrooge role from grumpy curmudgeon to being reborn and vital, although I’m not convinced of his claim as it seems to obvious – maybe its something that Euros Lyn, the director and Simon Callow drew out more during production. Gatiss does talk about a previous version of the story which was far more Dickensian in tone with mediums, spirits and oddly-named characters and you can see how elements of it have remained in the slightly more straight-forward story which reached the screen.

Simon Callow is superb as Dickens. Callow is a Dickens expert, having played him many times in live shows. His performance here is perfect and I adore the scene in the hansom cab where he begins to warm to the Doctor when he reveals he is a fan of his work. Putting aside my earlier issues with ‘guest characters saving the day’, the scene where he returns to the house (having bolted through a mixture of sheer terror and unwillingness to accept the bizarre truth of the situation) and forces the Gelth out of their host bodies is a bit of a punch-the-air moment for the character.

The other two main cast members are also great. Alan David gives a wonderful performance as Sneed, by turns sympathetic and slightly slimy. Even more of a revelation is Eve Myles who is awesome as Gwyneth. It is easy to see why the production team wanted to work with her again and give her the top role of Gwen Cooper in Torchwood. Her conversation with Rose in the scullery where they bond over boys and she unwittingly reveals her psychic gift, and the presence of the ‘Big Bad Wolf’ in Rose’s mind, is charming and chilling in equal measure.

The Gelth, as a monster, I find the least successful element of the story. I’m not overly keen on the ‘zombies’ but my main issue is with the reveal that the Gelth have been deceiving the Doctor. I don’t think its initially clear enough what is happening. The blue Gelth suddenly turn into a fiery red with fangs but the dialogue becomes a bit indistinct and its not immediately obvious why they’ve gone ‘bad’ as it were (apart from the fact that they were clearly always going to be the ‘baddie’ so it isn’t a massive shock when they reveal their true colours). Of course, the Gelth, realised as insubstantial spirits, are a further descendent of the Victorian obsession with the spirit world as we’ve already seen in The Curious Tale of Spring Heeled Jack, The Haunting of Thomas Brewster and, to a lesser extent (not really being Victorian), Assassin in the Limelight. This story also involves a séance to contact the spirit world, a popular pastime in Victorian England (and would clearly have featured more prominently when eccentric spirit mediums were more central to the original story idea). The concept of a séance being a gateway to an alien world is something we’ll return to in the Jago and Litefoot story: Spirit Trap. This propogation of gaseous, insubstantial, ghost like aliens in Victorian England is something I plan to look at in more detail in a separate post.

Historically we have, of course, Charles Dickens and (as with The Shakespeare Code; and later with The Unicorn and the Wasp) a story which includes echoes of written work. His live performances of his novels, particularly A Christmas Carol are historical fact as was the state he found himself in prior to his death – estranged from his wife due to some daliances outside of wedlock and suffering from gout (not specifically mentioned in the script but commented on by Gatiss and Callow in the commentary). The close of the story mentions his infamous unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood – the ending of which is, as I understand it, hotly debated by Dickens aficionadoes in much the same was as we try to wrangle out the inconsistencies of UNIT dating. The bittersweet ending of Dickens declaring a revelation of how to end the novel and the Doctor quietly revealing to Rose that he’ll never get to write it due to his death later in 1870, is a beautiful way to end the story as it the TARDIS dematerialising from the street with snow swirling away into the wind and Dickens skipping off through the night.

On initial broadcast, The Unquiet Dead was touted as a prime example of how good the new version of the series was. At the time, I wasn’t convinced. Something about the story didn’t click with me. This time round (and I have watched it once since initial broadcast) I found much more to enjoy. The ‘look’ of the episode still leaves me a little cold (it’s a bit drab) but the central performances from Eccleston, Piper, Callow, Myles and David propel the story along; the special effects are excellent and the Victorian atmosphere is perfect – it’s something all the production teams of Doctor Who have been adept at as evidenced in The Next Doctor and clear in classic series examples, The Talons of Weng-Chiang and Ghost Light, and Matt Smith stories The Snowmen and The Crimson Horror (another Gatiss Victorian-set episode).

It’s been interesting that I’ve had a similar reaction to this story as I did to The Next Doctor – both left me a little cold on initial broadcast, both I’ve watched once since without much change in opinion, but when viewed as part of my marathon I’ve found lots to enjoy and its giving me a new, slightly different perspective on what I thought was my opinion of the new series.

Let’s Kill Hitler is an infamous story. From it’s title to it’s main guest star, it’s an episode designed to make us sit up and pay attention – although not necessarily for the right reasons.

Moffat, like RTD, enjoys baiting the audience (and fandom in particular). Titles are a great way of doing this. RTD did it with The Doctor’s Daughter. Moffat did it with The Doctor’s Wife. Let’s Kill Hitler was the ‘mid-series’ kick off for the split Series 6. We’d ended on the ‘Avengers Assemble-esque’ A Good Man Goes to War and this story was going to begin to pick up some of the revelations about River Song’s true identity.

But how to get the audience back after the break. Put Hitler in the title! I know some fans have a bit of an issue with the title, in retrospect, as Hitler is such a tiny part of the episode and it could be argued that the story doesn’t deliver on the implied promise of such a sensationalist title. But the title isn’t telling us the story is about Hitler. It’s actually making it very clear (with the benefit of hindsight) that this is all about River Song. Although, to begin with, we don’t know that Mels is an earlier incarnation of River, ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ is precisely the sort of sensationalist, naughty comment River would make as she gads about the universe. This is a River Song episode through and through.

Unfortunately, that’s sort of the least interesting thing about it. I don’t mind River Song, and it’s obvious Alex Kingston has a whale of a time playing her, but she’s a character I can take or leave and not one I’m ever clamouring for the return of. I wouldn’t say I was ever particularly invested in her arc, especially when it strayed away from the ‘time traveller’s wife’ conceit that she arrived with in Silence in the Library. It all just got a bit convoluted. Within an isolated episode, though, she’s a fun character who always reminds me a bit of a cross between Bernice Summerfield and Iris Wildthyme.

But, for me, River Song is easily the least interesting thing about the episode. The opening sequence with Rory and Amy careering around a cornfield in an attempt to get the Doctor’s attention is glorious and played well by Gillan and Darvill. My love of Arthur Darvill’s Rory is on record and he never disappoints. The arrival of Mels is the force of nature Moffat wants from the script and the flashbacks to the trio’s childhood – replete with unconvincing ‘adult pretending their teenagers’ scenes – are brilliant.

The best part of these though is easily the final shot of Mels tossing the model TARDIS across Amy’s bedroom and it morphing into the real TARDIS crashing towards 1930s Berlin. It is a marvellous shot and seamlessly executed.

Once in Berlin, we get some beautiful period work. The setting is realised well and as they emerge from Hitler’s office into the wider expanse of Berlin, although we don’t see a huge amount of it, it is convincing and well-realised.

Hitler, as we all know, is cursorily dealt with pretty early on. The conceit of them having saved Hitler’s life is well done in the script but not dwelt on too much before he’s punched by Rory and thrown in a cupboard. I think I’ve seen criticisms that this episode ignores the pure horror of Hitler and his effect on world history. As part of my teaching about World War Two with my class of Year 6, we look at propaganda and, in particular, at how Hitler was often portrayed in British propaganda – as a figure of mockery and fun. The famous Careless Talk Costs Lives posters depict Hitler in a variety of silly positions (on a London bus or sitting in a train’s luggage rack with Mussolini; disguised as a couple’s dog; hidden in beer pumps, pint glasses, wallpaper and with his head stuck through a painting). It is deliberately mocking him and make him ‘defeatable’. Let’s Kill Hitler is continuing in this tradition of mocking a hugely evil man. Your mileage may vary on whether this is appropriate now, in the 21st century, as the reason for doing in during World War Two is clearly not a necessary line to take any more but I can see how a writer, such as Moffat, may have, even subconsciously, absorbed that need to laugh at evil or adversity. In fact, he is on record as saying that laughing at Hitler is the right way to behave as it would aggrieve him far more than to still be feared and revered as a figure. It’s also true that, on occasion, the Doctor – particularly in Moffat’s time, enjoys mocking his enemies, such as when he is wheeling around in Davros’s chair in The Witch’s Familiar. It is also echoed later in Series 10’s Thin Ice when the Doctor punches Lord Sutcliffe. Overall, I do think it’s the right approach for this story. A story more centred on Hitler and the Third Reich would probably take a different tack, but that’s not what this story is about so I think it is pitched right.

Hitler is saved, by the TARDIS’s crash landing, from the Teselecta – a robotic human duplicate which actually houses miniaturised humanoids that are on a mission of justice to ‘punish’ criminals. Although the story doesn’t go into the background of the race inside the Teselecta, or even that much into their modus operandi or motivation, this re-watch had me loving the whole concept (and, of course, the Teselecta is actually key to the Series 6 finale so there is still some detail to come).

The crew are broadly painted but likeable (although it’s a shame the marvellous Ella Kennion – Boudicca in Big Finish’s The Wrath of the Iceni and the peerless Captain Sinker in CBeebies series, Swashbuckle – appears in little more than a cameo and disappears for the rest of the story, including when the Antibodies attack the crew). This time round I also loved the Antibodies. As a menace, I remember them underwhelming me originally, but this time found them both amusing and menacing. A Behind the Scenes feature on the DVD details how the Antibodies are physical remote-controlled props. I don’t know why, but this insight made me appreciate them even more. Their original concept was similar to how the Handbots turned out and was changed and, I think, it was the right decision as it brings them closer to their ‘real world’ inspiration.

One minor detail I had completely missed on previous watches was the identify of the Professor that River speaks to at the end of the story when she is enrolling at the Lunar University. It’s Professor Candy – a character who was included in Steven Moffat’s Continuity Errors short story (the foundation of A Christmas Carol and the general time-wimeyness of Moffat’s Who). He is also around in the Bernice Summerfield range and, indeed, features in the first NA novel Oh No It Isn’t where he becomes Dame Candy when Bernice is transported to a world of pantomime (go and listen to the Big Finish audio version or read the book – it’s glorious). It’s not important to the story but as a subtle tie in to the expanded universe of Doctor Who, one I really appreciate being included.

The core story of Mels/River and the revelation of Amy and Rory’s lost baby is, actually, of far less interest me. I never find I’m hugely engaged by the concept of River Song and don’t feel I ever really got a handle on the whole ‘brainwashed to kill the Doctor’ bit but then, because that is tied up in the very confusing Silence arc, I’m not surprised the finer details seem to have passed me by. It’s definitely something I need to look at in more detail (but not something that watching the series in the way I am is going to help with particularly).

This re-watch did find my enjoying the story a lot more than previously. I love the opening scene, the scenes of Amy, Rory and Mels’ childhood are great fun (and the model TARDIS to real TARDIS shot is simply gorgeous), the Berlin 1938 setting looks great and the whole Teselecta element is brilliant – and something that really deserved it’s own story rather than playing second fiddle to the River Song storyline.

I was a little hesistant going into this story as it’s one of my favourite eras and yet this story always seemed like a bit of an anomaly. In a way, it is, but it’s still got a lot going for it and is hugely engaging for its runtime.

A fun romp which fits really well into the Pertwee/UNIT era.  Tim Treloar is very convincing as the Third Doctor, although I do wish Katy Manning would understand that she sounds more convincingly young when she doesn't try so hard.  The set up - an alien stone spaceship at the bottom of the lake - is a good conceit but the script does end up just jumping back and forth between the ship and dry land for most of episodes 2-4 making it end up a bit repetitive.  It's a good guest cast though which holds the interest and, as someone who wasn't convinced the Third Doctor Adventures would necessarily be for him, as not being a huge fan of that TV era, I do now anticipate more from this series.

The Eighth Doctor Adventures continue with The Space Age by Steve Lyons.  The arc of stories from The Shadows of Avalon onwards has focussed hugely on Compassion and her transformation into a human TARDIS.  The novels themselves have generally been quite good (after The Shadows of Avalon, which was horrid).  Both The Fall of Yquatine and Coldheart were pretty solid, fun adventures with well-written regulars.

The Space Age breaks a good run with a fairly middling story.  It’s not bad per se, but it does fizzle out after a strong conceptual start, has a bunch of thinly-drawn fairly interchangeable characters and does practically nothing with the regulars.

The Space Age sees the Doctor, Fitz and Compassion arrive on a strange planetoid with a futuristic city.  The city is populated by two groups of humans, with a third group living in the wilderness outside.

This third group is completely forgotten about after the first few chapters and referred to once in a sentence at the end.  It feels really sloppy and smacks of Lyons forgetting he had introduced them till he came to write the resolution.

The other two groups are, like the plain dwellers, from Earth – Earth of 1965 to be precise – and are a gang of Mods and a gang of Rockers.  Many years previously, an alien visitor to Earth transported them all to this planetoid in a misguided attempt to give them the future they desired.

As a concept, there is a lot of interest here.  The idea of Mods vs Rockers gang warfare playing out in a futuristic environment – one based on 1960s predictions of elevated walkways and moving pavements, gleaming chrome towers and food machines – is certainly a good basis for a Doctor Who story.

Unfortunately, the story is not capitalised on, mainly due to a thoroughly unengaging guest characters.  The two gangs are practically interchangeable – aggressive male leaders; emotional women; a hardened ‘technician’; an angry teenager and his ineffectual parents.  As a reader you are not made to care for them at all.  The futility of their constant aggression towards each other is repeatedly referred to but nothing is developed and because there is no point to the conflict, there’s no point in caring for the characters.  The leaders learn hardly anything; the women get to rally against the idiocy of the men; the angry teenager dies leaving his parents distraught.  It’s all just so cliched and dull.

I’m not usually one to be down on a Doctor Who story as I will always strive to find something to enjoy but this one ended up as such a disappointment that, towards the end, I was forcing myself to pick it up to read.  Aside from the unengaging cast of characters it also does nothing interesting with the regulars.  The Doctor falls in with the Rockers and is tasked with making them weapons to defeat the Mods – which obviously he doesn’t do, preferring to solve the mystery of why the city exists in the first place; Fitz falls in with the Mods and does nothing except strive to save his own hide until he can be reunited with the Doctor.  They are recognisably written but just do so little throughout the story.

Worst of all though is Compassion, who is literally sidelined for the whole story.  She ‘freezes’ at the outset of the story and then suddenly appears in the Mods base, communicates with the aliens responsible for the whole farrago and then leaves with the Doctor and Fitz.  It is, unfortunately, as if Lyons simply didn’t know what to do with her, despite the fact that her ‘special’ situation didn’t prevent her being used well in Coldheart (or, for that matter in the following novel, The Banquo Legacy).  A novel has the time and word count to accommodate plenty of characters so this seems like a failure on the part of Lyons.  It’s something which I don’t like writing because I’m a fan of Lyons other work – Conundrum, Killing Ground, The Murder Game, The Fires of Vulcan, Son of the Dragon and, recently reviewed in my other marathon, Harry Houdini’s War and Smoke and Mirrors – two excellent audios exploring the Doctor’s relationship with the famed escapologist.  The Space Age, unfortunately, feels like a job where Lyons has rather dropped the ball on a number of fronts – beyond the initial ‘pitch’.

Hopefully the next novel, The Banquo Legacy, can redress the balance somewhat.

I tried.  I really tried.  I really really tried.  I actually went back and rewatched the first two episodes when I realised I hadn’t really been paying proper attention to them.  I paid proper attention.

Nope.  Don’t like it.

Dull, slow, poorly acted, boringly directed and that interminable song!

Let’s get that song out of the way first.  It starts off okay.  It works quite nicely in the first episode, setting the scene and emphasising the tone.  But it just goes from bad to worse.  When the song starts narrating events happening on screen, particularly the numerous deaths in the final two episodes, it is ridiculous and the slow, tragic arrangement of the tune sounds awful.  Why on earth they didn’t simply transfer to an instrumental version of the story as the tone of the episodes darkened is beyond me.  Ugh.
The deaths the song tortuously narrates are also appalingly acted.  Not a single death convinces as actor after actor takes a gunshot and then falls into their pre-arranged position.  Warren Earp and Charlie the Bartender are bad enough, but most disappointing is the death of supposed ace gunslinger and notorious outlaw, Johnny Ringo who is pushed over (or something) by Dodo, and then shot unconvincingly by Doc Holliday.

I’ve said this story is poorly acted, although I should qualify that statement.  The cast is of variable quality.  At the good end are Peter Purves being the standout of the TARDIS crew, Sheena Marshe’s Kate, Anthony Jacobs’ Doc Holliday and John Alderson and Richard Beale as Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson respectively.  At the terrible end are all the Clanton brothers, especially David Cole’s Billy, David Graham’s Charlie the Bartender, Victor Carin’s Virgil Earp and, I’m sorry to say, Laurence Payne’s Johnny Ringo and…..William Hartnell.

A principal problem in the story is the American accents.  They come and go from scene to scene, and the final gunfight at the OK Corral sees Laurence Payne and David Cole barely even bothering to affect an accent (I assume this, as it is on film, was filmed prior to the studio scenes, but that’s hardly an excuse).  But the delivery of lines is sorely lacking.  Laurence Payne, in particular, seems bored and makes no impact in any scene he appears in.  Bearing in mind, he is supposed to be this notorious outlaw, he singularly fails to convince.

But Hartnell….  I’ve read other reviews praising his performance in this story, commenting on how he clearly enjoying the comedy.  Now, aside from the fact I don’t think this is a particularly funny story anyway, I just don’t see it.  The first episode sees him wandering around moaning about his toothache and being hoodwinked by the locals.  Maybe its this scripting I have a problem with more than Hartnell’s performance; I just don’t believe the Doctor would be a stupid as this story portrays him.  The Doctor would know Holliday and Kate were manipulating him; the Doctor would be much more on his toes when confronted by the Clantons in the saloon.  The Doctor would be far more concerned about Steven going off with Ringo and Dodo being kidnapped by Holliday than he is.  But Hartnell also seems bored.  His performance is so lacklustre.  The gag of him calling Wyatt Earp, Mr Wearp isn’t funny and nor is the ‘I do wish people would stop giving me guns’ bit.  When he is deputised by Earp, he goes to stop the Clantons but arrives after they’ve left and then has no part in the final gunfight.  He doesn’t prevent it, he doesn’t get involved, he doesn’t mourn the outcome.  Now, I realise this is part of the point, established in his reticence to hold a gun, but it just means that, yet again for a Hartnell historical, he hardly has any impact or influence on events, merely letting them wash over him until he can get back to the TARDIS.

On the flipside, Peter Purves is great.  He plays Steven’s comedy well and  the scenes in the saloon where he is forced to sing at gunpoint feature some great expressions from him.  Unfortunately, Steven also becomes more and more pointless as the story progresses to the point where he disappears for the whole final gunfight (along with the Doctor).  He is pushed from pillar to post by the Clantons and even his brief alliance with Ringo goes nowhere and provides nothing in the way of interesting scenes (partly due to Laurence Payne’s aforementioned lacklustreness).  It’s a shame Steven is wasted in this way.  Purves does a good ‘Steven trying to do an American accent’ bit though and his costume is gloriously silly.

This is one of Dodo's better stories.  Her scenes with Holliday and Kate are quite nice although she seems to suffer from a case of rapid Stockholm Syndrome and doesn’t seem terribly perturbed by her predicament.  That said, her trusting nature is something which was evident in the previous story, The Celestial Toymaker (where she was ridiculously trusting of the treacherous Cyril) so it doesn’t seem out of character that she would take the word of Holliday (and to be fair to him, he does keep his word and return her to the Doctor unharmed).  Dodo is also actually involved, briefly, in the final gunfight, which at least means the regulars have a presence, however brief, in the actual climax of the story.   Jackie Lane continues her trek around the UK with her variable accent, adding in a few brief American twangs, although she doesn’t seem to have the conviction to stick with it as much as Purves does.  She’s a demon on the piano though!

The cliffhangers in the story are also terrible.  The first cliffhanger is Steven singing whilst the Doctor walks veerryyyy slowwwllllyy along the street.  The third cliffhanger is a shot of Warren Earp, a minor character only introduced into the story about 15 minutes earlier, lying apparently dead on the floor of the Sheriff’s office.  What tiny ounce of tension there is, is immediately dispelled by the dulcet tones of Lynda Baron wafting over each final scene.

A couple of positives: the sets are quite good and there is a large cast of extras drafted in for the lynching scene, meaning it does at least seem convincing.  Also, the direction is quite interesting with director, Rex Tucker, using different angles to shoot from.  This does serve to make some scenes rather more dynamic than the acting or script allow by themselves and was one way the story managed to hold my attentions.  A more flat direction, and I think I would have lost any interest I was clinging to.

Historically, it seems that The Gunfighters is closer to Hollywood legend than historical fact.  Bat Masterson, Warren Earp, Phineas Clanton, and most significantly, Johnny Ringo, were not in Tombstone in 1881.  Warren Earp, whose death here is partly responsible for initiating the gunfight between the Clantons and Earps did not die in real life until 1900!  Ike Clanton is shown to perish in the gunfight, but in reality he survived and Pa Clanton had died in the August of 1800 making it rather difficult for him to feature in these episodes.  The actual gunfight involved four other men: Morgan Earp, Billy Claiborne and Tom and Frank McLaury.  Apparently, Doc Holliday was only 30 in 1881, whereas Anthony Jacobs is clearly portraying a man of older years (he was 48 in real life).  In real life, there were numerous events leading up to, and provoking, the gunfight.

However, the characters of Doc Holliday, Wyatt, Virgil and Warren Earp, Bat Masterson, Ike, Phineas, Billy and Pa Clanton and Johnny Ringo are all real people.  Intriguingly, so is Kate, Holliday’s girlfriend, and one-time squeeze of Johnny Ringo.  In real life she was Mary Katherine Horony Cummings, known as Big Nose Kate.  She was Hungarian born and, unsurprisingly from the implicit nature of her character, a prostitute.  What is quite striking about Kate and Holliday is the way their obviously sexual relationship is presented on screen with a couple of quite saucy scenes.

Ultimately, The Gunfighters is my least favourite style of Doctor Who story.  No, not just a western…but also a story where the Doctor is incidental to events.  Events in the story would occur just as they do regardless of the Doctor, Steven and Dodo’s presence.  Now, this in itself, isn’t necessarily a bad thing but when the entire climax of the story excludes the Doctor it makes everything seem rather inconsequential.  I don’t find the comedy funny, the tragedy is completely undermined by the interminable song and the actings and accents are so variable it makes a lot of scenes almost unwatchable.  The few glimmers of good stuff; Peter Purves, Anthony Jacobs and Sheena Marshe, Rex Tucker’s direction and the sets and costumes are nowhere near enough to rescue this story from languishing at possibly the very bottom of my personal poll.  At least The Time Monster is entertainingly bad.  This is just boring and painful in equal measure.

The Fires of Vulcan sees the 7th Doctor and Melanie arrive in Pompeii a short while before the eruption of Vesuvius. The Doctor is aware that the TARDIS is destined to be discovered buried in the ash of Pompeii by archaeologists in 1980. He concludes that this means this is his last trip as something must have prevented him from leaving. Thankfully, Mel is less doomladen and determines to discover a way out of this predicament and with a little timey-wimey tinkering at the end, the Doctor and Mel are able to leave Pompeii alive and yet still allow the TARDIS to be discovered in 1980.

This audio marks the first time that Big Finish worked with the character of Mel. Much maligned on TV (unjustly, in my opinion), Big Finish sought to round her out into a proper character and actually allow Bonnie Langford to prove she is a capable actress. The television version of Mel was sullied by prejudiced fan opinion of the time. The insult of ‘panto’ was levelled at the series, and Mel’s character in particular, time and time again. It was an insult wielded by people who clearly have no understanding of pantomime. Pantomime, an historic theatre tradition, is a passion of mine and therefore, rather than view it as insignificant and laughable as many people do, I see it as an intricate art form which it takes real talent to perform properly. It is seen as the last refuge for washed up comedians, soap stars and the like, but is actually a microcosm of good theatre.

Doctor Who, however, has never been ‘pantomime’. It has never included the requisite elements to be a panto (and the series has dallied with many different formats over the years so it isn’t as if it couldn’t have if it wanted to) and the ‘panto’ criticism is really just a euphemism for ‘this is a bit stagey and embarassing’ – an opinion I couldn’t be further from agreeing with in regards to 80s Who.

The Fires of Vulcan is ‘set’ slap bang in Season 24: the season of ‘panto’ as far as some fans are concerned. Delta and the Bannermen, in particular, received fan wisdom will tell you, is generally disliked by much of fandom . The Fires of Vulcan couldn’t be more different to these tales which, ‘panto’ accusation aside, are light-hearted, glossy and at some times, admittedly, silly.

Big Finish clearly set out to give us a serious story which would demonstrate the talents of McCoy and Langford at delivering more sombre material than Season 24 would traditionally suggest. It’s difficult to imagine this story as part of the same season as Paradise Towers and Time and the Rani, and yet the characters of the Doctor and Mel are not a million miles from their TV counterparts. They are just showing a different aspect. Gone is the Season 24 clown of a Doctor and in is the darker version McCoy began to evolve in Season 26. Bonnie Langford gets to play the characteristics of Mel which were already present on screen – her honesty, her tenacity – with a better script and this rounds Mel out into a believable character. I never had the issues many fans had with Bonnie being cast as a companion as I have long been an admirer of her ability. Big Finish simply allows Bonnie to work with scripts that give Mel that bit more depth, whilst not compromising the original character.

In The Fires of Vulcan she is great: determined to prove the Doctor wrong, standing up to people like Celsinus and Eumachia; battling through the devastating effects of the eruption to find the TARDIS and only really giving up when all seems completely lost.

The Doctor, in turn, is melancholy and sombre but also cheeky and manipulative (his game-playing with Murranus the gladiator, for example). This allows both facets of the 7th Doctor to shine through and is one of McCoy’s best performances.

The supporting cast are very good with Gemma Bissix as Aglae standing out in particular. Steven Wickham’s Murranus doesn’t quite sound right to me, his tones are too plummy for a hardened gladiator, but this is a minor complaint in a uniformly good cast.

In the spirit of the 60s historicals, the Doctor and Mel are visiting a ‘famous’ historical event – the eruption of Vesuvius. This horrific event is superbly depicted in audio – explosions, screams, rocks and some good dialogue which describes but never feels unnatural. The fact that the fates of all the Roman characters are left unsaid is quite powerful and allows the Doctor to surmise on the fact that, for once, they will never know if Aglae, Valeria or the others survived.

Other aspects of Roman culture are thrown in here and there including the acceptance of ‘foreign’ gods into everyday life (in this case, the goddess Isis). We have the same Roman staples present and correct as we saw in The Romans: gladiators, slaves, banquets along with a few extra, more salacious aspects such as the local pub, gambling and the local brothel – with a prostitute (Aglae) being one of the main characters – and paired up with the whiter-than-white Mel for most of the story!

This side of history is something which the TV series, obviously, could never really address, but Big Finish, with it’s ability to hint subtly at things and not actually need the actual visuals, takes full advantage in being able to show all aspects of history.

Quite a bit of Roman vocabulary is thrown here and there including words like tepidarium, stola and decurioni and apparently the names of the characters are all based on real people from Pompeii based on graffiti from the uncovered ruins.

The Fires of Vulcan is one of Big Finish’s earliest successes and will probably stand as one of their best plays ever. It holds the important position as the beginning of Mel’s renaissance and continuing the Big Finish revival of the pure historical story. This is a wonderful exploration of an important historical event.

I’ve always been a fan of this story ever since seeing the existing part four – The Final Test – on The Hartnell Years VHS release.  With 3 episodes missing it was also turned into a reconstruction by the magic hands of Loose Cannon and is, I think, one of their best recons.

So it was a bit of a surprise when over recent years I’ve seen the story fall from favour amongst fandom.  It’s funny how these things happen (and always makes me despair at the negative attitude of a lot of fans towards Moffat’s Doctor Who).  Stories which were revered are re-examined and re-evaluated by fans and sometimes their faults become more obvious and fans become less forgiving.  Conversely, stories which were traditionally seen as the dregs of the series are championed by larger and larger groups of fans.  This is why I can’t see the point of fans constantly complaining about ‘new’ Who.  Give it 10 years and suddenly they’ll be a bunch of fans who adore The Rings of Akhaten, Nightmare in Silver or In the Forest of the Night.  Others will emerge who are bored by The Empty Child.

The Celestial Toymaker was one of those stories which ‘received fan wisdom’ told us was wonderful.  It spawned a fan favourite in the Toymaker – a villain who has returned in comic strips, novels and audio.  He was even to return in the aborted Season 23 in a story now available for us to experience thanks to the efforts of Big Finish.  But suddenly, fans don’t like it any more.  Now I’m not saying ‘fan wisdom’ should ever be taken as verbatim.  Indeed, I strongly believe fan wisdom is a fallacy.  Our fan language (our ‘fanguage’, if you like) was moulded and set in the 70s, 80s and 90s by the upper echelons – fans such as Jeremy Bentham and Ian Levine.  Fans who ‘remembered’ the stories when they were broadcast; fans who wrote the articles in Doctor Who Weekly, Monthly and Magazine.  They told us what was good and what wasn’t.  The Celestial Toymaker was good.  The  Gunfighters was bad.  Genesis of the Daleks was good.  Revenge of the Cybermen was bad.  All of Season 24 was a travesty.  And so it went on.  Statistics like audience appreciation figures and viewing figures were wheeled out to prove points with little or no context.  In pre-internet days we knew no better.  It was only as these stories started appearing on VHS, and latterly DVD, that fans started to realise maybe we had been misled a little all these years.  Suddenly people were saying they enjoyed The Gunfighters.  There were even people not convinced by the glory of Genesis of the Daleks and – shock horror – someone even liked Delta and the Bannermen enough to make it their username online and have it as a theme for their 40th Birthday cake…

And it seems the poor old Celestial Toymaker has plummeted in favour.  But I still rather like it, although maybe more for the potential than for the realisation.

Negatives out of the way first.  The Doctor’s role in the story is terrible.  The whole trilogic game is dull as ditchwater and it is rendered even more ridiculous on audio with Peter Purves intoning lines like ‘2 moves on to 4 and 3 on to 8’ with as much drama as he can muster.  The absence of the Doctor is something the series has dealt with well on numerous occasions both before this story and since.  Unfortunately, I think the behind the scenes ructions and the possibility of replacing Hartnell as the Doctor, have led to a quick fix solution which isn’t very satisfying.

Dodo, in this story, is hugely irritating.  The script can’t make up its mind whether she is scared of the Toymaker’s domain or entertained by the games and fun.  She is ridiculously naïve around the Toymaker’s minions and it’s a wonder Steven doesn’t leave her to her fate when, even in the final episode, she’s is falling for Cyril’s tricks.

Whilst I like the games Steven and Dodo are forced to play, and the characters they play against, it is frustrating that, time after time, they win the game merely due to the mistakes of the other ‘team’.  There is a real sense of them merely blundering through each stage of the contest and winning purely by luck rather than ingenuity or cunning.  It’s a shame, because more could have been made of them sussing out the Toymaker’s  modus operandi and maybe playing him at his own game by the third or fourth episodes.  As it is, they approach each game as if it’s their first with Dodo even stating ‘I think I’m going to enjoy this game’ before embarking on TARDIS Hopscotch in the final episode.  It doesn’t make sense that they don’t learn anything from the earlier games and it undermines Steven and Dodo as characters.

So what do I like?  I think Michael Gough is great as the Toymaker and I can see why the character was a fan favourite for returning is various comics, novels and audios.  The concept of an all-mighty being that delights in playing twisted versions of familiar games is ripe with potential.  I know a criticism that’s levelled at this story is that the potential isn’t realised but I disagree.  The musical killer chairs is a great sequence with each chair killing in a different way; the version on the Loose Cannon recon of the demise of the King and Queen of Hearts is chilling, although admittedly we have no way of knowing how that was realised on screen.  I also rather enjoy the hunt the key/dancing floor games.  The idea of being trapped on a dance floor with no control over your actions has echoes of fairy tales such as Snow White (which saw the Wicked Queen put into hot iron shoes and made to dance to her death).

I also love the different characters the Toymaker sets against Steven and Dodo.  Carmen Silvera, Campbell Singer and Peter Stephens are all great, particularly Silvera and Singer who manage to give three very different characters in each episode.  Clowns are always spooky and the silent Joey and the slightly hysterical Clara work well, I think.  Sergeant Rugg and Mrs Wigg and their verbal battles are also lots of fun but the best of the bunch, for me, are the King and Queen of Hearts.  It is from these characters that we get more hints as to who these creations are.  Steven keeps asserting that they are just toys brought to life but I think the script hints to us that they are more than this.  They are previous victims of the Toymaker – ones who lost the games he forced them to play.  The King and Queen act autonomously, willing to sacrifice the Joker and the Knave in an attempt to win and be released from their servitude.  The Toymaker refers to them as ‘the Heart family’.  Could this actually be a family caught in his world – ‘the Hart family’ for instance.  Likewise, Rugg and Wigg.  I can see how Rugg or Wigg may have been caught in a deal with the Toymaker much as we see in the comic and novels which came later.  Cyril, too, with his cheating ways, could easily be a human desperate to escape and amoral enough not to care what happens to Steven or Dodo in his stead.  Look at his ‘yaroo!’ when he thinks he’s won, enough to forget his trap of slippery powder and fall to his death.  Those are the actions of a human, a desperate human.

It could be argued that these implications are aspects of character I’m applying after the fact.  Having read Divided Loyalties, read Endgame or listened to The Nightmare Fair, where different authors have extrapolated the concept of the Toymaker, his power, his minions and his world, maybe I’m retconning the characters and events of The Celestial Toymaker and seeing things that aren’t necessarily in the script as written or produced.  But then, does that matter.  Not really.

The climax of the story, with the Doctor restored but unable to complete the game lest he destroys himself along with the Toymaker’s world is a good ending too.  It is a battle of wits that fits the two characters, especially as they seem to know each other of old.  The concept, too, that despite the Toymaker’s world ending, he, as an entity, will go on to build new worlds, is also tantalising.  The widening of the Doctor Who mythos to include these ‘god-like’ entities is important as it isn’t something the series had ever really touched on before.  Whether retro-fitting the Toymaker into the same pantheon as the Black and White Guardians, as later fiction does, is a successful extrapolation is a discussion for another time but even just the titbits of information we are given here are enough to intrigue.

This is, of course, something that Russell T Davies seems to be running with in the 15th Doctor's first series after the return of the Toymaker in The Giggle.  It's interesting that the show is finally exploring some of the potential housed in The Celestial Toymaker that I saw myself.  I am also looking forward to the soon-to-be released animated version of this story which also looks as though it will be exploring the potential of this story.

A curio.

The Massacre is the third and final script by John Lucarotti. It’s fair to say that my relationship with Lucarotti’s writing has been a little rough. I rather dislike Marco Polo but I adore The Aztecs. So where does The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve fit? Somewhere in between is the rather simplistic and boring answer. Although I didn’t have as many problems with it as I do with Marco Polo, I didn’t love it as much as The Aztecs either. Of course, the fact that Donald Tosh extensively rewrote the serial needs to be taken into consideration here (I don’t remember being overly enamoured with Lucarotti’s novelisation of the story which, apparently, returns the story to a earlier draft than the version which ultimately made it to screen, but it has been many, many years since I read it).

I think both this story and Marco Polo suffer from a lack of visuals, The Massacre even more so as we don’t even have a bunch of telesnaps recovered from the director’s attic. As far as I’m aware there are no more than about 10 photos from the whole production – and nothing showing a key aspect of the story: Hartnell as the Abbot of Amboise.

Consequently, it is a little tricky to follow the political machinations of the rather large cast and I must admit to being lost a couple of times as to who was speaking to whom. There is Nichola Muss, Gaston and Anne Chaplet; Admiral de Coligny, Catherine de Medici, King Charles IX, Marshal Tavannes, Simon Duvall, Roger Colbert, Teligny and Charles Preslin, not to mention sundry unnamed characters, Steven and both the Doctor and his doppelganger, the Abbot of Amboise. This, to me, seems like a massive cast for an average Doctor Who story – and with most of them being fairly similar sounding, it makes an audio only story a bit difficult to keep track of.

However, when making a concerted effort to pay attention and follow the plot, a fascinating and quite troubling plot is revealed.

Central to this story is Steven. This is basically a Doctor-lite story, 40 odd years before the new series invented the concept. Of course, prior to this story there had been Doctor-less episodes – two parts of The Keys of Marinus for example – but this is the first time the Doctor has frankly had nothing whatsoever to do with the main outcomes of the story. The Doctor disappears during part one, War of God (after some delightful interplay with Preslin), and doesn’t reappear until part four, Bell of Doom. When he does return he berates Steven for causing trouble (none of which was Steven’s fault) and bundles him into the TARDIS for further adventures in time and space.

Understandably, Steven is livid with the Doctor – principally for leaving Anne Chaplet to her, probably bloody, fate, but also, I think, for leaving him in the lurch with no explanation, no contact or reassurance and no apology!

Steven is central to the entire story, caught between the Protestants and Catholics and not really understanding any of the issues causing the tension. He protects Anne, not because he believes the Catholics are evil but because it’s the right thing to do for a vulnerable person. He spends time at the Admiral’s house not because he believes in the Huegenot cause but because Nicholas is the only person willing to offer him hospitality.

The trauma that Steven is put through is tangible. The confusion he feels when he discovers that the Abbot looks like the Doctor is shared by the viewer. Is it the Doctor? If it is, why is he doing it and why hasn’t he told Steven?  The possibility that this is the Doctor with some grand unknowable plan recalls the manipulative Seventh Doctor, particularly the version portrayed in the New Adventures, or the way the Second Doctor manipulates Jamie in The Evil of the Daleks. It is shocking to even contemplate the possibility that the Doctor is masquerading as the Abbot and leaving Steven to fend for himself in a time and place he cannot hope to understand. When it seems that the Doctor has been murdered in the street and Steven is pursued by a vicious mob, the viewer shares his utter hopelessness. Anne’s suggestion of returning to England brings home the stark reality of what would happen to the Doctor’s companions (particularly ones who don’t even have a fellow companion with them) if the Doctor were to actually die and leave them stranded in a time and place they didn’t belong.

Aside from the focus on Steven, the other unusual aspect of this serial is its subject matter. I can guarantee most Doctor Who fans only know about this rather obscure event in history because of the series. It’s not a historical time or place that I have ever come across in any other part of my life – not museums, television, books or even the wonderful Horrible Histories. That said, though, having listened to this serial a few times, I don’t actually think my knowledge of it is any greater. I know that there was religious tension between the Catholics and Protestants (or Huegenots). I know that Louis IX was on the throne but his mother, Catherine de Medici had influence over him. I know there was a marriage between a Protestant Prince, Henry, and a Catholic Princess in a futile, and probably insincere, attempt to bring peace to the two factions. I know that the Catholics attempted to assassinate Admiral de Coligny. I know that there was a terrible massacre of Protestants around the time of the festival of St Bartholomew’s Day. What I don’t know is what came before or after. I don’t know why there was this specific tension. I don’t know what the result of the marriage was or of the massacre itself. Of course, what this should make me do is go and find out. I think the difference here is that, with most historical periods visited in Doctor Who, we already have a basic understanding of the period and the players. Whether its Rome burning while Nero fiddled or Vikings raiding Britain or Cortez wiping out the Aztecs, these are times and places that are more familiar than 16th century France. Without any prior knowledge the viewer (listener) has to pay attention to every single line of dialogue to build up a picture of what is going on. This puts us in exactly the same position as Steven and that is a very good, and yet – to some extent – unsettling thing.

In terms of firsts for Doctor Who, here we have the first example of a doppelganger of the Doctor. Yes, I know previous to this we had the robot Doctor created by the Daleks in The Chase, but, one – that was a robot specifically designed to look like the Doctor; and two – it looked nothing like the Doctor! This is the first instance of another person who just happens to look like the Doctor (something that would be revisited from time to time, most notably in The Enemy of the World). Of course, this other person is a villain (in so much as any of the characters in this story are villains) but it allows Hartnell to play a very different character to the Doctor – particularly the softer, more playful character the Doctor had become by the third season. Much has been made of the fact that Hartnell doesn’t fluff his lines as the Abbot, but then the suggestion that the ‘Billy-fluff’ was an affectation is countered by the fact that in the historical stories, a clear favourite of Hartnell, he rarely fluffed his lines anyway.

That said, though, the Abbot is hardly in the story and serves more as a plot device to increase the level of jeopardy for Steven. Hartnell was on holiday for episode 2 anyway, so we only really see the Abbot a bit in part one and then part 3 before he is murdered. It’s isn’t the all encompassing performance that Troughton would give us as Salamander or even Tom Baker as Meglos.

And this is the reason why, unlike the Doctor’s non-involvement in Marco Polo his non-involvement in The Massacre is vital to the plot – indeed is the plot. Steven’s confusion, despair and ultimate anger because of how the Doctor behaves in this story and the presence of the Abbot is central to the entire story.

The Massacre is an unusual story and I can’t quite decide how much I like it. I adore the fact that Steven is pushed front and centre for the entire story, but do miss the Doctor’s contribution to events a little. The huge cast of characters can be confusing (especially on audio) but with a bit of concentration it isn’t beyond me to keep up. The main criticism I would have is that there is an awful lot of standing around and talking as characters divulge the plot with not a huge amount of action in between. With very similar sounding characters, that does make it a little uninvolving from time to time but I think the uniqueness of the serial balances this out and means I look forward to revisiting the story at some point in the future. I’m off now, to find out more about the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve so I can properly understand what on earth was going on.

I haven’t commented on Dodo’s introduction. I don’t really know what to say. It’s so at odds with the rest of the story and causes Steven’s anger to dissipate almost instantaneously that I can’t take it seriously. Add to that the fact that Jackie Lane’s accent is utterly bizarre (especially if it is supposed to be Wimbledon Common she’s stumbled in from) and the ridiculous suggestion that she could be some distant relative of Anne and I don’t really want to deign the idea with my thoughts – oh look, I just have! I think I’ll save commenting on Dodo till we reach a full story with her in.

The Myth Makers is an odd fish. It’s one of those lost stories that, due to the lack of photographic record, fans know very little about. We have the soundtrack and the odd photograph, but nothing substantial enough to get a proper feel for the story – at least not in the same way as other lost stories, such as Fury from the Deep or Marco Polo.

I first became acquainted with this story through the Loose Cannon reconstruction. At the time, I loved it. It was exciting to finally be ‘watching’ a story that I knew little about and Loose Cannon have done a wonderful job bringing to life a story which has very little surviving material. It evens includes the grainiest, murkiest clips that I’ve ever seen for any Doctor Who story and specially filmed shots of a wooden horse.

This time round, however, I watched the reconstruction whilst listening to the superior recording of the soundtrack courtesy of BBC Audio. The repeated use of the same four or five photographs, along with shots taken from stories such as The Romans and non-Doctor Who serials like I, Claudius works really well for about one episode. It then starts to grate and by the time I reached episodes 3 and 4 I gave up on the reconstruction and simply listened to the remaining audio. It’s a shame that they couldn’t find some ‘greekier’ shots to stand in for certain characters as the Roman aspects are obviously Roman and therefore don’t quite work. That said, it is an admirable effort and one that I did end up revisiting when I watched through the Hartnell era with my eldest child.

The story sees the Doctor, Steven and Vicki arrive on the plains of Asia Minor near the city of Troy whilst it is besieged by Greek troops vowing revenge for the kidnap of Helen. Interestingly, Helen never appears in the story and after the initial couple of episodes is never mentioned. The Doctor is mistaken for Zeus, Steven pretends to be Diomede, a dead Greek soldier, and Vicki is renamed Cressida by the Trojans and lauded and denounced equally as a prophet and a sorceress. And that is, really, it. The Doctor spends most of the story avoiding coming up with the wooden horse as a means of invading the city – only to fall back on the scheme when all else fails; Steven gets captured by the Trojans and released by Vicki only to be wounded in the ensuing battle and Vicki falls in love with Troilus, a young Trojan prince, and remains behind when the TARDIS leaves.

The Myth Makers is well known amongst fan circles for being ‘a comedy’. Dennis Spooner, who penned The Romans (another comedy which this marathon will soon experience) returns to give humorous lines to more historical characters. However, it’s really only Paris who is given the funny stuff and Barrie Ingham plays him very much as a comedic character – even delivering slightly duff lines like ‘it’s too late to say whoa to the horse’ with committed aplomb. Frances White is saddled with wailing and moaning as Cassandra and Francis de Wolff as Agamemnon and Ivor Salter as Odysseus spend most of the story being gruff, macho and occasionally sarcastic at either the Doctor’s, Steven’s or (Agamemnon’s brother) Menelaus’ expense.  William Hartnell seems to do very little and isn’t given very comedic material and with Steven manning up as Diomede and Vicki telling everyone she’s from the future, the regulars don’t really seem as strong as usual.

There are also some very odd pieces of dialogue for a family show, not least Odysseus’ simile involving an orgy!

The addition of Katarina to the TARDIS crew at the close of the story is also very odd. Without visuals it is impossible to know if Adrienne Hill, the actress, features in any scenes in the first 3 episodes, but the first we hear of her on the audio is in Episode 4 when suddenly, Cassandra starts giving her instructions, followed by Vicki asking her to look after Steven.

As a potential companion, she is given no character aside from being Trojan and a handmaiden. Unsurprisingly she believes the TARDIS is taking her to the afterlife and the production team quickly realised that her character was unsustainable as a companion blaming her historical naivety and the difficulties that would cause writing for her in stories taking place outside of her realm of experience.

Personally I think the problem was more an underwritten character – she is little more than an extra judging by the number of lines she has in Episode 4. Historical companions can work, as Jamie proves in very next season, and indeed as we Big Finish proved with Erimem.  Had Katarina been introduced from the beginning, maybe as a friend to Vicki – something akin to Ping-Cho’s relationship with Susan in Marco Polo – then she could easily have worked.

The historical aspect of the story comes through strongly with a large cast of Greek and Trojan characters as well as ‘off-screen’ characters such as Helen and Aeneas. The siege of Troy is a well known story and the Doctor posits the idea that the wooden horse ploy was probably made up by Homer when he wrote the tale down. Of course, it is the Doctor who comes up with the idea of the horse, having read about it in Homer, giving a neat little paradox for us to ponder. That said, it’s possible the Doctor meets Homer in the future and tells him about the horse, so maybe it was the Doctor’s idea all along!  (And indeed, the novelisation of the story inserts Homer into events).

The final battle is, at least on audio, well realised with lots of swords clashing and screaming. The lack of visuals is a shame as I would love to see how this massive event was depicted on screen. I imagine that my imagination is somewhat better than reality.

How much of this ‘history’ is true is questionable, particularly due to the comedic nature of the story, but it definitely fits with the early serials historical remit and visits a period of history that is familiar to most people, if only through myth rather than historical fact.

A story that has potential but maybe doesn't for me, realise it all.

As a story, The Time Meddler is not really anything special. In terms of its contribution to the overall development of the series, it is crucial. It is the first time we discover that others from the Doctor’s (still unnamed) planet are travelling in time and space and that the TARDIS is not unique – it’s not even the most up to date model. It is also the first time in the series that the two story types: historical and futuristic were combined.

The Doctor, Vicki and surprise arrival Steven, land in Northumbria in 1066. Here they encounter Saxons, Vikings and a Monk meddling with time. The Monk is one of the Doctor’s own race and has a TARDIS hidden in the local monastery. He is planning to aid the Saxons in destroying the Viking invaders so that King Harold is able to fend off the soon to arrive Normans led by William the Conqueror. If Harold wins all of British history would change. The Doctor, with the help of the local Saxons foils the Monk’s plans and leaves him stranded in 1066 after stealing his dimensional circuit.

I have fond memories of taping The Time Meddler off the TV when BBC2 repeated it as part of a repeat season in 1992 (over 30 years ago!!). That said, I don’t have massively fond memories of the story. It was one of the first Hartnell stories I saw (I only became a fan around the age of 13/14 in about 1989) but it has never ranked in my favourites of this era. There are plenty of bits I like, but there are also plenty of bits which are, frankly, a bit dull.

Peter Butterworth as the Monk is brilliant. Mischevious and vaguely amoral he is the opposite to the Doctor and a far more interesting adversary than the straight down the line ‘evil’ Master. He’s enjoying his trips round time and space and bending the rules here and there seemingly for the fun of it. His interplay with Hartnell is wonderful and they are ably supported by Maureen O’Brien and Peter Purves.

The guest cast of Saxons and Vikings are fairly non-descript – saddled a little with silly moustaches, beards and hairstyles – but one stand out is Alethea Charlton (last seen ugging it up as Hur in 100,000 BC) as Edith. Her scenes with the Doctor are lovely. Verity Lambert points out on the commentary that she is very ‘Surrey’ in her hospitality and its true that it may seem a little anachronistic for her to behave in such a way, but there is such charm in Charlton’s performance coupled with some real steel later on. The suggested rape of Edith is all the more powerful for the fact that we care more about this character than we might do, purely down to the performances in those early scenes.

The Vikings are a bit lacklustre and look a little like Swedish 1970s porn stars with long shaggy hair and large handlebar moustaches. That said, though, they don’t look that different from the stereotypical images that have illustrated the two Viking-themed comic strips we’ve experienced so far.

The Saxons, with the exception of Edith, don’t fare much better with even more shaggy hair and beards they fight to get their dialogue past. The acting is passable, but they are not given a huge amount to work with. The best of the rest is probably Edith’s husband – who even gets a topless scene!

Away from the machinations of the Monk, this story encourages us to learn about 1066 and all that. The Doctor gives a massive info dump early in the story (which, according to Donald Tosh on the commentary is a Hartnellisation of the original script which had caused some consternation amongst the production team as he was giving away a lot of the upcoming plot). The Doctor mentions Harold Hadrader, the Vikings, the Normans and 1066, commenting that Barbara would have loved it (Barbara and Ian having departed in the previous story, The Chase).

The sets are very good, something which the commentary guests comment on continually, from the saxon crook house, to the forest and the monastery. The monastery in particular has a sense of scale often missing from the Hartnell stories, limited as they were to small studios and a lack of location filming. It seems that Barry Newbery (also present on the commentary) did extensive research before building the sets and he comments on the fact that the black floor in the crook house – partly necessitated by the studio floor – was in actual fact historically accurate due to the practice of putting ox blood on the ground which would have turned hard and black and make a perfect flooring.

The rape of Edith is another aspect which lends a historical validity to the events unfolding. Although it is unspoken and the scene could be read in a few different ways, the fact remains that rape was something Viking invaders committed. To have it alluded to in a children’s programme is both shocking and commendable.

Less accurate, possibly, is the Viking helmet the Doctor discovers on the beach (leading to one of the Doctor’s best lines – ‘A space helmet for a cow!’). As far as I know, the presence of horns on Viking helmets is an invention of films and TV and, historically, they would have worn no such thing. Intriguingly, none of the actual Vikings are shown wearing anything like this and seem to be decked out in some far more accurate helmets and the like. There is also an effective inclusion of stock footage of a replica Viking longship – which the restored and cleaned up version of the story prepared for this DVD release makes to fit seamlessly into the studio recordings.

The Time Meddler does at times feel a little like a history lesson, and at others seems like a bunch of lacklustre fight scenes strung together by Peter Butterworth and William Hartnell’s battle of words. Peter Purves makes an immediate impact as the cynical Steven and Maureen O’Brien continues to give Vicki more life and vitality than was ever present in her predecessor Susan.

The Monk is easily the best part of this story and it is no surprise the production team brought him back in The Daleks’ Masterplan. It is a shame he didn’t return again on TV although he does appear in a number of comic strips, novels and audio dramas. None of these, however, can hold a candle to Butterworth’s performance.

The Crusade has never been one of my favourite stories. I read the novelisation long ago and found it a little dull. The existing episode three did little to improve my opinions, although I did always enjoy the performances, particularly Jacqueline Hill’s and the scene between Julian Glover and Jean Marsh as Richard and Joanna. When the first episode, The Lion, was discovered I viewed it with trepidation and found that it did little to improve my view of the story.

Rewatching the story for this marathon I have discovered a little more respect for the story – mainly for the performances, if not an enjoyment.

My main issue is the dialogue. It is incredibly florid and ‘Shakespearean’. I am a great fan of Shakespeare but, for me, this style does not fit into Doctor Who very well. It is too stagey and to some extent forced. When the Doctor himself starts using words like ‘methinks’ and Jean Marsh stumbles over lines which, to the modern tongue, are oddly constructed, I have to wonder if it was a good choice. Doctor Who can be many many things, but a Shakespeare play is not one of them – at least not on the basis of this story.

The most engaging part of this story is Barbara’s plotline. Kidnapped by El Akir’s men, managing to escape into the dark streets of Lydda, only to be captured again, we have great scene after great scene – particularly the existing episode three – The Wheel of Fortune – which sees her contemplating the death of a young girl and herself to protect them from El Akir.

Unfortunately, this is punctuated by the Doctor and Vicki’s ineffectual politics in the court of King Richard which mainly boils down to Vicki posing as a boy, the Doctor avoiding arrest for stealing clothes and the Earl of Leicester suspecting them of being spies. This final idea goes nowhere when the Doctor and Vicki simply slip out of the palace and run back to the TARDIS. They are pursued, rather feebly, by the Earl of Leicester. He takes the word of Ian, someone he has never met, and the crew are able to escape.

Indeed, Ian, with William Russell due his holiday episode, is packed off for the majority of the story in search of Barbara, whom he finds and brings back with very little effort on his part. Even his encounter with Ibrahim in the desert seems merely a way to have him do something before reaching Barbara. It certainly has no impact on the plot.

Maureen O’Brien’s Vicki is markedly less of a confident character than she will become by The Time Meddler. She is very much the poor little orphan girl, even having a slightly cloying scene where she worries the Doctor will leave her and whining that the TARDIS is the only home she has now.

The Doctor is fun, and not a little softer than earlier serials of this era, but the whole stolen clothes part sits a little uncomfortably with me.

This story is another example of some bonafide historical characters meeting the Doctor and his friends but here we have a calvacade: King Richard I, Princess Joanna (or rather Joan according to online sources), Saladin and Saphadin (the Western names for the Arabic leaders). Checking online though, it seems that Richard’s knights are all inventions. There are plenty of Williams and even a de Preaux, but none of the names actually given in the story appear in online historical sources as far as I can tell.

The story revolves around real places such as Jaffa, Lydda and Ramla with mention made of Tyre and Genoa. Production restrictions of the time though mean that much of the story could be set anywhere. Ramla is tents and Jaffa is a castle. The only place with a sense of ‘exoticness’ is Lydda with its dark shadowy streets,

The costumes for the story are very good, although I am not sure where the Doctor gets all the clothes for himself, Vicki and Ian as he only seems to steal a couple of garments and one pair of boots from the dodgy market trader, Ben Daheer.  Also, there are some very flamboyant moustaches on show – particularly William de Tornebu and the Chamberlain!

Another make-up aspect that must be mentioned is Bernard Kay ‘blacking up’ to play Saladin. It stands out quite markedly as none of the other ‘Saracens’ are blacked up. Roger Avon (Saphadin) and Walter Randall (El Akir) are not, and many of the smaller roles and extras seem to be played by actors with, at the very least, a darker complexion, if not of a non-White ethnicity. Of course, nowadays, Kay’s casting would never happen and, to be fair, it’s not massively obvious in the production as the make-up is actually quite good, but as a sign of the times this production was made, it is interesting. One wonders if more of the cast would have been made up in this way if they did not look suitably exotic, or if – for the smaller roles – non-White actors/actresses were deliberately sought with only the plum role of Saladin going to the ‘best’ actor regardless of race.

Historical episodes are difficult to pull off with the fact the TARDIS crew cannot be seen to interfere too much in established events. I think this is worse when real historical characters are included as stories such as The Aztecs seem to suffer less from the problem.

The Crusade seems to take this to the extreme with the crew having hardly any impact on the events around them, aside from saving King Richard in the first few scenes (which his men could probably have managed without them).

The regulars watch as events unfold around them, particularly the Doctor and Vicki, and for much of the story I felt like the ‘guest’ characters treated them as minor distractions from the bigger events. Their interactions continually seemed cursory.  Also, I feel the story lacks focus. There is no outright villain which most stories, even the other historicals, do have. There is no Tegana or Tlotoxl. The closest we get is El Akir, but this is a character the Doctor and Vicki never meet, Ian only meets briefly (just before he is killed by another supporting character) and doesn’t even spend a huge amount of time in the company of Barbara whom he has kidnapped early in the story.

The separate stories of the regulars don’t really end satisfactorily either. The Doctor and Vicki and Ian and Barbara arrive back at the TARDIS with little idea of the troubles of the other couple. This is something played to comic effect in The Romans, but here just means the story ends on something of a damp squib.

All in all, it’s a story which doesn’t gel for me. There are some lovely set pieces, excellent performances and the regulars, on the whole, are superb as always but, as a sum of its parts, it just doesn’t satisfy.

The one where the TARDIS crew have a holiday near Rome and then rollick around Nero’s court as lyre players, slaves and gladiators.

The Romans is well known as the first ‘comedy’ episode of Doctor Who and I love it. It is truly hilarious – the regulars sparkle with a comedy script, especially Hartnell and the slapstick/farcical elements play out really well. The slightly darker aspects – mainly Ian’s storyline – don’t seem at odds with what else is going on and we end with the beautiful pay off of the Doctor inspiring Nero to burn Rome.

Some of the jokes are wonderful: the Chesterfield/Chesterton/Barbara’s calling you; the ‘she looks after the liars’; and ‘close your eyes and Nero will give you a big surprise…Pardon' (Jacqueline Hill’s delivery of that single word is hilarious).

The concept of the Doctor and Vicki having a parallel storyline to Ian and Barbara and the two pairs never knowing how their paths have nearly crossed is original and a lot of fun. Vicki unwittingly saving Barbara from poisoning and the Doctor constantly foiling Nero’s attempts to accost Barbara in the third episode are well played. Although Ian’s storyline relies on a number of coincidences everything else is too much fun to care.

Ancient Rome, and the nearby areas, are well depicted – Nero’s palace; a Roman villa; a Roman market; a countryside lane; a Roman galley, beach and cells. The costumes are, probably, accurate and look stunning, particularly the Doctor’s and Barbara’s.  This historical characters are depicted as one would expect for this time - sure that there may be historical myths being perpetuated and the rough edges of history shaved off for a children's TV show.  The official court poisoner, Locusta (who was definitely a real person - she's even referenced in the final episode of I, Claudius) is a brilliant inclusion.   The rest of the Romans are, I think, fictitious but it is an interesting touch to have Tavius revealed to be an early Christian.

The Doctor lectures Vicki on interfering with history when she nearly poisons Nero (and does, technically cause the death of comedy servant Tigilinus). The entertaining exchange at the close of the story when Vicki accuses him of influencing history by inspiring Nero to burn Rome is an interesting twist on his rather more serious discussions with Barbara in The Aztecs.

A great story and one of the highlights of the Hartnell era – the regulars are all on top form and the guest cast is practically faultless – with special mention for Ian’s surrogate companion Delos (played by Peter Diamond) and Locusta. Dennis Spooner’s script is brilliant and is proof that Doctor Who, as a series, can do practically any genre when in the right hands.

The Reign of Terror is a strange tale.  It seems to fall between two stools as far as the historical stories go.   The historicals seem to fall into two camps – the comedy and the tragedy.  The Mythmakers, The Gunfighters, The Romans and The Time Meddler all go for a strong comedic angle whereas Marco Polo, The Crusade, The Massacre and The Aztecs very much take a serious, and often tragic, approach to the history they portray.  The Reign of Terror seems to be a little of both and, consequently for me, is far less satisfying.  The only other story which steers towards this dichotomy of style is possibly The Highlanders.

The subject matter is similar to The Massacre – a reign of terror in France where people live in fear for their lives.  It is quite merciless in its depiction of the violence of this regime, particularly in the first episode.  Susan and Barbara spend an awful lot of the story in a dark, dingy prison cell.  Susan, also for much of the story, is terribly ill.  The Doctor nearly dies in a burning building.  Ian’s cell mate dies before we really get to meet him.  Leon Colbert turns out to be a traitor and Robespierre is shot, relatively graphically, in the jaw.

In contrast, the jailer of the Concergerie is consistently played as a comedic character.  The Doctor’s encounter with the road crew is deliberately meant to be funny and his prancing around with ostrich feathers protruding from a ridiculous hat lends an odd tone to the second half of the story.

It just seems to me that these comedic elements sit awkwardly within the rest of the story.  Unlike the comedy of The Romans or The Mythmakers where it is the tone of the story and threaded throughout the script, the comedy in The Reign of Terror seems like isolated sketches or comes across as shoehorned into the script to desperately lighten the mood.  The worst offender for this is the roadworkers scene.  It serves no purpose, plotwise and, bearing in mind Barbara, Susan and Ian are all potentially headed for the guillotine, it frustrates the Doctor’s progress to Paris for no readily apparent reason – it doesn’t increase the tension as the Doctor is unaware of the predicament his fellow travellers are in.  The other problem with this vignette is how easily the Doctor gives in to the Overseer.  The Overseer tells him to join the crew and the Doctor says yes.  The Overseer doesn’t threaten him with his gun until the Doctor has agreed and there is no reason the Doctor couldn’t have fudged a reason why he couldn’t present his papers (not least because I don’t understand what authority the Overseer even has).  Seeing as Susan states this is the Doctor’s favourite period of history, I find it odd he isn’t better prepared to outwit the Overseer.

And then, of course, we also have the infamous shovel bashing.  When fans complain that the Doctor is never violent, they seem to wilfully forget all the times he is violent.  However, this occasion does seem a little gratuitous.  The Overseer is completely distracted by the coins and there is reason to believe the Doctor could easily have escaped without bashing him over the head with a shovel (which, bizarrely makes the man snore – I’m sure unconscious people don’t snore).  Certainly it would have seemed less out of place if one of the roadworkers had wielded the weapon.  Of course, for the first season, this isn’t completely out of character for the Doctor.  Only the presence of Ian seems to stop the Doctor braining Za with a rock in An Unearthly Child, so his lack of companions here suggests that, unchecked, the Doctor has few moral qualms about inflicting pain on others.  This is an interesting idea when viewed in the light of Donna’s comments to the Doctor at the end of The Runaway Bride about him needing someone to temper his more extreme actions.

Another strange element of this story are the final episode’s scenes with Napoleon.  Ian and Barbara get to play act as landlord and landlady and spy on a secret meeting between Napoleon and Paul Barras.  Basically, this is just a mini history lesson explaining how Napoleon began his rise to power in the wake of the revolution.  It has no true impact on anything in the story and isn’t even that interesting (although Ian does get to wear a lovely hat).

My other problem with the story was the lack of urgency.  Barbara is the only character who really makes any effort to improve their situation but even she gives in easily to Susan’s pathetic moans and mystery illness.  The Doctor wanders around getting himself in and out of trouble with his gift of the gab and Ian stumbles upon the answers to his mysterious message.  The supporting characters, with the possible exception of Edward Brayshaw’s Colbert, fail to make much impact.  In particular I found James Cairncross’ performance as Lemaitre ever so slightly weird.  Maybe it’s because I was fully aware of his secret identity of James Stirling, but every line, every look seemed to be laden with an odd secretive tone which just seemed to much.  It’s as if the audience is supposed to suspect him despite having no reason to.  Much of the story relies on some huge coincidences: Jules and Jean just happen to accost Ian and bring him back to their hideout where Barbara and Susan are; the Doctor just so happens to bring Lemaitre to the hideout who just so happens to be Stirling who Ian is looking for.

The story also takes a strange, never before seen/never seen since stance on changing history.  Rather than the ‘you can’t change history…not one line’ assertions of The Aztecs, here the Doctor and Susan suggest that you can try to change history, but something will happen to set it back on the ‘right course’ regardless of your efforts – which includes an odd explanation where Susan says that if they wrote a letter explaining to a historical character what would happen in the future, ‘they would lose the letter or just forget about it’ – or words to that effect.  It’s a weird scene thrown in at the very end of the story which seems at odds with the ethos of the programme up to that point, and certainly since then.  This seems to be the preference of Dennis Spooner, the writer, who would go on to become script editor after David Whitaker and develop this story's approach to the course of history in later historicals (particularly with dialogue in The Time Meddler).

In the story, we have the presence of Robespierre and, tangentially, Napoelon Bonaparte and Paul Barras but the setting of the French Revolution is a little more than a backdrop because the serial gives very little actual factual information about the so called Reign of Terror.  It’s never really explained who Robespierre is or why Ian, Barbara and Susan are arrested and sent to the guillotine.  The Doctor’s assumed identity of a governor of the southern province isn’t elaborated on and the story seems to assume the viewer already knows the basic facts of this period of history.  I think I know something of the period, but to be honest I think most of my knowledge is based on Carry On…Don’t Lose Your Head!

There is, though, much to enjoy.  The cliffhanger to episode one with the Doctor trapped in a burning farmhouse, is very exciting.  His rescue by Jean-Pierre and subsequent scene with the young boy is very sweet and shows how Hartnell was already softening his character even by the end of the first season.

Although, the sets are fairly limited throughout the story (we spend an inordinate amount of time at the prison and in one tiny room and Jules’ house), what we do have is the first ever location filming.  Even though we know it isn’t actually Hartnell on the film, it looks gorgeous and the cut from film to studio is neatly done, such as the part where the Doctor sits down on the milestone.The regulars are as always wonderful (to Carole Ann Ford’s credit, she makes a fairly thankless role believable and engaging, even if, storywise, she contributes absolutely nothing).  The supporting cast, too, are strong even if, as I’ve said, as characters they make little impact.

The costumes are authentic but I find it amusing that it’s the Doctor and Ian who get the fancy rags, whereas Barbara and Susan spend most of the story in the rather dowdy (and probably by the end of the story fairly dirty) dresses they pick up from the farmhouse in the first episode.

The animated missing episodes on the DVD of this release are an interesting curiousity.  They use a style which wasn't replicated in many other releases and consists of an awful lot of close ups with some very stark black and white contrasts.  It works in as much as it helps tell the story alongside the original soundtrack, but it isn't as accomplished as some of the animations which came later.

The Reign of Terror is a slightly odd fish of a story and not one I think particularly highly of but it does demonstrate an interesting bridge between the different ways historical stories were treated by the ever changing production teams.

The Aztecs has always been one of my favourite Hartnell stories, and is probably in my all time top ten of the whole series, classic and new (although I tend to be unable to limit myself to 10 and the titles tend to be a little changeable depending on the mood I’m in).  I must have watched it countless times before and it never fails to entertain and amuse me.

What struck me the most though, on this viewing, is how different it is to John Lucarotti’s previous script for the series: Marco Polo. This is everything that Marco Polo wasn’t for me. Superb sets and costumes coupled with an intelligent, tightly plotted script, brilliant performances and the regulars actually doing something rather than being on the sidelines.

Of the regulars, this is Barbara’s story and allows us the pleasure of Jacqueline Hill’s best performance as Barbara – her sparring with Tlotoxl is amazing. William Russell gets to be a proper action man coming up against a man who is basically his Aztec equal, Ixta. William Hartnell’s scenes with Cameca in the garden (and the heartbreaking scenes towards the end when they part) show that the softer side of the First Doctor was evident much earlier than we may sometimes consider. Even Carole Ann Ford’s Susan is less screamy and useless than in surrounding stories and although partly due to her ‘holiday’ episodes, gets some decent, if brief scenes, in the seminary educating children everywhere on what it was like to be a young, single Aztec girl. Her opinions on marriage are fun, if a little more like a emancipated 60s girl’s thoughts than an alien Time Lord’s.

John Ringham, as Tlotoxl, is probably the series best villain up to this point – far more menacing than Tegana and a character who actually succeeds in certain aspects of his dastardly plans. Possible a touch melodramatic at times (particularly in his final scene sacrificing the Perfect Victim after the TARDIS crew have escaped), but huge fun. His scenes of plotting against Barbara, in particular his tricking her into agreeing to have Susan punished, are a joy to watch. He is supported ably by Keith Pyott as Autloc, Ian Cullen as Ixta, Walter Randall as Tonila and Margot Van de Burgh as Cameca, all working together to create a believable Aztec community.

The script allows for these wonderful performances. Is there any scene better than the Doctor getting accidentally engaged to Cameca? It’s hilarious and is coupled with the wonderful scene where the Doctor casually mentions to Ian what has happened with William Russell’s brilliant double take. Episode 3 also has the superb scenes where Barbara saves Ian by threatening Tlotoxl and later where Tlotoxl and Tonila attempt to poison her. There are so many excellent scenes across the four episodes (in fact I cannot think of a duff scene or even line in any episode). The dialogue sparkles and even though it strays towards the ‘Shakespearean’ vibes I didn’t find appealing in The Crusade (or for that matter Marco Polo), it just seems to work in this instance.

In teaching us a little about the Aztec culture, the majority of information is concentrated on the practice of human sacrifice. We are presented with the balance of the priests of sacrifice and knowledge; we are given detailed information about the Perfect Victim and we have the odd nugget of detail dropped into dialogue such as the Aztecs not having invented the wheel. We also have the reason for Barbara’s drive to change the Aztec way of life in her explanation of the arrival of Cortez – although we never actually see this for ourselves.

The costumes and sets look authentic and are in no small part responsible for how wonderful this story is as a whole.

I honestly cannot think of one bad thing to say about this story and look forward to watching it again some time in the far distant future when I’ve finally finished this marathon.

The Keys of Marinus is one of those stories which, whilst not the best example of Doctor Who, is a fun romp with some interesting ideas and a good example of how the show was testing its format’s limitations right from the very first season.  What sets this story apart from others in the season, and to some extent the majority of the entire series, is that is swops locations every episode.  Each one is like a separate adventure in its own right.  With different sets, actors and to some degree, plot every 25 minutes the overall story is something of a mixed bag.  Some sections work better than others and there are certain episodes I think could have been good four parters with a bit more development.  There are other episodes which are probably best forgotten.

Essentially, The Keys of Marinus is five stories: the Voord part which frames the adventure; the Morphoton episode; the jungle episode; the snowy episode; and the CSI: Millennius episode.  My favourite is easily The Velvet Web and I would happily watch a four episode version of this.  Some more development of exactly what the ‘brains’ are hoping to achieve through their mind control and a slightly less ‘easy’ denouement would easily fill out a couple more episodes and the insertion of extra characters – particularly others who have broken the conditioning and are rebelling against the ruling forces – would easily expand the one episode.  Let’s face it, there are plenty of Doctor Who stories with less plot than that!

The direction of this episode with the point of view switching between Barbara and the others is well executed (even if John Gorrie isn’t massively happy with his work on the commentary).  I adore the part where Hartnell and Russell admire an empty room with a chipped tin mug as if it is the cutting edge laboratory they believe they are seeing.  I also think the ‘brains’ of Morphoton are a fun villain/monster and, as I say, could easily be developed further.  (I also can’t watch this episode without thinking of the legendary Outpost Gallifrey/Gallifrey Base thread which posited an alternative history of Doctor Who in which the TARDIS crew were joined by Steve the Morpho Brain after the events of this story…!)

This episode also has a good commentary (I watched half the episodes with commentary and half without) and has an amusing section where John Gorrie praises Carole Ann Ford’s performance and the character of Susan and Ford swats him away with a cursory ‘I thought the part was rubbish’ retort (I paraphrase, but that was the general gist).

The Millenius section of the story is also very good and Hartnell is clearly having a whale of time (obviously refreshed after his two weeks off previously).  The central murder mystery is okay, but it’s the performance of Hartnell both in the court, and reconstructing the crime (by bashing Barbara over the head with his stick) which is the most entertaining.  There are a few dodgy elements, such as Kala, one of the conspirators, giving herself away by letting slip a detail about Susan’s kidnap that she would only know if she were the kidnapper, but overall it’s a strong section to a patchy story.

The Snows of Terror is okay: Vasor the trapper is a chilling creation, particularly in his obvious desire to assault Barbara, but the episode is let down by lots of ‘brrrr it’s cold’ acting (why Altos’s legs don’t drop off from the cold is a mystery, seeing as he only seems to be wearing a pair of tight underpants below his massive cloak) and the most Monty Pythonesque of knights seen in the series.  The Ice Soldiers are a very weak link in the story and when one trips and falls down a crevice it does feel like we’ve entered silly land (although if it’s a good enough death for Eldrad, I suppose we can’t criticise it too much).

My least favourite part is probably a toss up between The Screaming Jungle and the final Voord-related section of the final episode.  The Screaming Jungle suffers from some dodgy effects work and some extremely dodgy acting from Edmund Warwick (yes, he of the Robot Doctor from The Chase).  The most ridiculous aspect of The Screaming Jungle are the traps – from the obviously stagehand hands of the statue, to the slow moving axeman and spike trap.  Jacqueline Hill’s acting is oddly hysterical in the scenes where the jungle is encroaching on the laboratory and Ian is portrayed as being particularly thick – he’s a scientist in a laboratory who doesn’t even consider the possibility that the code he is given by Darrius is a chemical formula (even if it isn’t a real world formula).  The other aspect of this episode which doesn’t make sense is the whole trap bit.  Darrius says that only he and Arbitan knew about the traps so would warn anyone legitimately retrieving the keys.  Therefore, why didn’t Arbitan warn his coerced key hunters?  Let’s assume he forgot due to his desperation, the loss of his daughter, the presence of the Voord and the speed with which the TARDIS crew disappeared off when Barbara zipped off unexpectedly.  This doesn’t explain, however, why neither Sabetha or Altos – both sent by Arbitan to retrieve the keys, seem to know about it or bother to warn Barbara and Ian.

The Voord sections of the story are also rather underwhelming.  The first episode is okay and the discovery of the submarines and dissolved Voord are intriguing.  Unfortunately, the rather clumsy gait of the Voord prevents them from being a particularly realistic threat, although I am a fan of their design, to some extent.  The best depiction of the Voord I’ve ever seen is a piece of artwork by Colin Howard which was included in the 30th anniversary calendar.  It showed the Voord sans rubber suit and was an imaginative extrapolation of what they might look like under the latex.  Yartek (leader of the alien Voord) only appears in the final episode and he isn’t going to enter the top 10 of any fans ‘best villains ever’.  He’s fairly non-descript (Stephen Dartnell isn't helped by having to act through a rubber mask) and a little too mwa-ha-ha for my taste, particular when he inserts the fake key into the Conscience machine.  And that’s another scripting goof.  Altos says that, to begin with nothing will happen but when the machine gets going, so to speak, the fake key will break under the strain and the whole place will explode.  When Yartek inserts the key, the Conscience (and pyramid) immediately explodes, contrary to what the dialogue has just established!

There are two main things which let down The Keys of Marinus – one is vaguely loveable and one is unfortunate.  The loveable let down is the number of fluffs and goofs, particularly in the first episode – visible stage hands, cardboard Voord, actors entering scenes too soon and lots of fun Billy-fluffs.  Mistakes seem less frequent in later episodes, but the unfortunate let down is present throughout – Sabetha and Altos.  John Gorrie is full of praise for the two actors, but seems to be basing most of this on the fact they ‘look the part’.  Their acting is horrible though – stilted in some cases, dull in others – particularly the final episode where, tied together, Altos bemoans the fact he cannot defend or protect Sabetha with the least amount of conviction he can muster.  I also don’t buy the vague romance supposedly going on between them.  They don’t spend a huge amount of screen time together and when they do they tend to be line feeds for the regulars.  Barbara’s melancholic ‘I will miss them’ as she steps into the TARDIS would be more believable if they were interesting characters.

Another fault of the production is one I hadn’t found a problem, but clearly was for set designer Raymond Cusick.  A short interview on the DVD reveals that he hates pretty much all of his work on this story.  It’s a shame, because I didn’t think it was too bad.  The cities of Morphoton and Millennius are fine, the court on Millennius is quite impressive actually, particularly in its size.  The ice caves are fine, bearing in mind the budgetary restrictions and only Arbitan’s pyramid is disappointing, mainly for being a little dull (although the Conscience machine itself is quite good).

For all these downsides, The Keys of Marinus is a story I can't help but love.  There's been some great work extrapolating the Voord in the expanded universe of audio and comics and the story does remain interesting throughout because of the regular change of setting and some really good story ideas.

NB: This is a review that is designed to champion the three 'caveman' episodes.  The first episode is amazing but it isn't reviewed here.

100,000 BC, An Unearthly Child, Doctor Who and the Tribe of Gum, the Palaeolithic Age, the untitled first Doctor Who serial…all apparently ‘titles’ of the first ever Doctor Who story. I’ve always been an exponent of 100,000 BC as the ‘correct’ title, but even more so in this marathon of mine as I have chosen to view the three ‘stone age’ episodes separately from the initial ‘An Unearthly Child’, 1963 set episode. There is such a clear division between the two sections of the serial that they are effectively separate stories entirely. An Unearthly Child deals with a mysterious police box in the junkyard and it’s even more mysterious inhabitants, the Doctor and Susan – all seen through the eyes of 1960s Ian and Barbara. Therefore, there will be more on that one episode much (much) later in this marathon.
The Cave of Skulls, The Forest of Fear and The Firemaker are more concerned with the power play of a Stone Age tribe and the survival of four disparate time travellers in this most alien of times.

100,000 BC has a reputation of being a bit dull and stagey after the brilliance of that first, ground-breaking, episode. Taken in isolation a slightly fairer evaluation can be made. They are still a little dull, with The Forest of Fear being the worst offender, but on the whole provide excellent performances of some wonderful dialogue; both from the regulars and the guest cast of cave people, some impressive sets and genuine tension surrounding the survival of the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara.

Much is made in the production notes for the DVD issue of this serial that the script began with much less dialogue written for the cave people. It seems clear that, initially at least, the Stone Age characters for this story were seen as the stereotypical Ug and Og brigade often seen in cartoons and comedy films. Anthony Coburn, however, in redrafts gave the guest characters more and more to say with increasingly eloquent dialogue which, although probably historically inaccurate, provides a life to the tribe that would have been sorely lacking otherwise. The almost poetic or Shakespearean words paint a picture of a tribe on the brink of collapse, of a leader who is lost and a usurper who sees his chance to take control. This is slightly off-set by furry animal skins, a couple of dodgy hairdos/wigs and by the vaguely comical names of Za, Kal, Hur and Horg, but really, what else could they be called?

Finally in my marathon we finally get some human characters native to prehistoric Earth. As people they are incredibly well-defined and superbly acted by Derek Newark, Jeremy Young, Alethea Charlton, Howard Lang and Eileen Way. Each of these actors, with the exception (I think) of Howard Lang, would return to Doctor Who in the future of the series, but I wonder if any topped their performance here. They carry entire scenes with the machinations of the tribe and as a viewer you are drawn into the power struggle regardless of its effect on the regulars.

My love for the original TARDIS crew begins with this story – although I don’t think I’d have been too upset if Susan had been clonked on the head by a stone age axe so that, after her strong start here, we were spared the development into scream-teen we get later on in the first series’ run. Jacqueline Hill and William Russell are completely engaging as the ordinary teachers thrown into a world completely removed from their own. William Hartnell gives a tour de force performance as the strange alien who is mocking, irascible and potentially murderous; willing as he is to kill Za rather than risk his and Susan’s lives for the sake of a wounded caveman.

Also, for the first time in my marathon, we get a good range of prehistoric locations. Previously we’ve had an open plain (Time-Flight) and a jungle (The Boy that Time Forgot). Here we have the open plain, the jungle and a cave. All are convincing and, knowing the limitations of the production itself, quite frankly amazing. The production notes of the DVD state that the designer, Barry Newbery based his forest plants on real fossilised leaves he had researched. The cave is convincingly claustrophobic – particularly the ‘Cave of Skulls’ area (even more so on film for the Ealing-filmed fight scene between Za and Kal – a surprisingly violent set piece).

In terms of the history of the universe we see a Stone Age tribe who have lost the secret of fire (which Ian returns to them). The forest is home to a variety of wildlife; something like a warthog and a predator of some kind. I have the feeling the novelisation has it as a tiger (maybe sabre-toothed; it’s been simply ages since I read it!) but the production notes say that in the initial script it was described as a panther.I have no idea where in the world this story is set – I have read something which suggests Africa but my knowledge of Palaeolithic man is limited and I wouldn’t have a clue where science/history actually sets this part of our civilisation’s development.

The ‘stone age’ episodes of Doctor Who’s first serial are often dismissed as poor companions to the iconic first episode but, overall, they are a solid adventure with the seeds of a true legend being sown throughout them.

Marco Polo is a little like the Holy Grail of Doctor Who. It’s the earliest missing story. Until recently all we knew about the story came from a few photographs and the audio soundtrack. The discovery of telesnaps (for all of the episodes bar episode four, The Wall of Lies) allowed us a more realistic glimpse into the story. Ultimately, though, Marco Polo has, for many years, rested on the laurels of its legacy. The pinnacle of historical stories, we are led to believe.

I beg to differ.

Comparing this to other historical stories, especially those from the first season, it pales into comparison next to The Aztecs and even The Reign of Terror. Marco Polo is just too long. Seven episodes is a rare story length for Doctor Who – the only other stories with 7 episodes are the triumvirate of Pertwee Season 7 serials: Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Ambassadors of Death and Inferno. Those stories, in particular Inferno’s parallel universe plotline, make good use of their seven episodes.

This story has the Doctor, Susan, Ian, Barbara join Marco Polo’s caravan for an interminable journey to meet Kublai Khan. The main thrust of the story revolves around the fact that Marco refuses to let the TARDIS crew return to their caravan (to which the Doctor needs to effect repairs) wishing to give it to the Khan as a gift. Around the fringes of the story are a blossoming friendship between Susan and Ping-Cho and the machinations of the villainous Tegana.

The journey for the characters is long and arduous, and unfortunately it is for the viewer as well. There is an awful lot of talk and not a lot of action. Every episode sees the TARDIS crew trying to convince Marco of their need to return to their ‘caravan’ and Marco refusing. Every episode sees Ping-Cho torn between her loyalty to Marco Polo and her friendship with Susan. Every episode sees Tegana attempt to sabotage the journey, generally fail, be caught out by one of the TARDIS crew and yet remain trusted by Marco.

One of the most frustrating aspects of this story for me is how underused the Doctor and Barbara are. Barbara, as the history specialist, is allowed a bit of ‘knowing the history’ at the beginning, but then spends the rest of the story suspecting Tegana of things which Marco never believes. Her kidnapping in Five Hundred Eyes and The Wall of Lies, is quickly forgotten and as far as I can tell she contributes nothing to the final few episodes. The Doctor disappears almost entirely for Episode 2 (so much so that, until he cropped up for one line towards the end I thought it must be one of the traditional ‘holiday’ episodes). In the next episode he collapses from exhaustion and dehydration. It is only when they meet Kublai Khan that the Doctor is given anything of significance to do. The idea of the aged Khan and the aged Doctor bonding over a game of backgammon is a lot of fun, but comes too little too late.

Added to this is the fact that when the villainous Tegana is defeated at the end of the story, it is Marco, rather than any of the regulars, who fights him leading him to eventually commit suicide. The TARDIS crew simply stand on the sidelines watching, receive the TARDIS key from Marco and depart literally minutes after Tegana’s death.

Throughout the entire story I just had the overriding impression that the TARDIS crew were merely bystanders. As the first proper historical story (100,000 BC was far more concerned with establishing the premise of the show than educating us ‘historically’) Marco Polo suggests that the historical story would gently educate us about famous figures from our past whilst the TARDIS crew potter impotently around the fringes. Thank goodness The Aztecs came along to see the regulars properly interact with history in the same way they were doing in the futuristic stories – contrast the roles of the TARDIS crew in The Daleks with their roles in Marco Polo and you may understand my dissatisfaction.

I think it is telling that The Beginning DVD box set of the first three televised stories contains a 30 minute version of Marco Polo as an extra. Frankly, it manages to tell exactly the same story and very little is lost. I am sure the costumes and sets looked wonderful, particularly for the time, but on the basis of the audio and images available I don’t think I am ever going to rate Marco Polo as one of the all time great lost serials.

Colditz is one of Big Finish’s earlier releases and has a number of claims to fame. It’s the story which introduced Elizabeth Klein to the Whoniverse. It’s the one that’s got David Tennant in it playing a nasty Nazi and it’s the one with the really, really, really bizarre and horrid sound design that makes you wonder how Big Finish even let it past quality control.

The 7th Doctor and Ace arrive at Colditz Castle, are immediately captured and spend the rest of the story trying to escape – but with the added complication of the appearance of Klein, a Nazi agent who has a surprising knowledge of the Doctor and his TARDIS. It transpires that Klein is from the future – a future where the Nazis won the war and she has travelled back in time to capture the Doctor.

The timey-wimey nature of this tale is a little difficult to get your head around to begin with (although get’s clarified greatly in the later releases ‘Klein’s Story’ which was released as part of a trilogy of stories where Klein temporarily becomes the Doctor’s companion) but it is a good conceit for a story which, ultimately, doesn’t have much else going for it.

Putting the time travelling Nazi plot aside for a moment, Colditz is a simple tale about the Doctor and Ace being trapped in Colditz castle and trying to escape. There is a ‘stiff upper lip’ RAF commander; a traitorous English civilian; a nasty, lecherous Nazi and a considerate, compassionate German officer. Ace is bolshy and defiant in the face of the Nazis and the Doctor runs rings around them, or at least before he gets dragged off into the time travel plot. It feels a little like the TARDIS has materialised in a black and white war film rather than the real history.

Fortunately, the mystery of Klein lifts the story beyond it’s rather mundane trappings and gives the listener something more original to enjoy. That said, the ‘Nazis win the war’ trope isn’t exactly original itself but I do want to find positives in this story. The guest cast is also excellent. Nicholas Young (from The Tomorrow People’ is excellent as Flying Officer Gower and David Tennant and Toby Longworth contrast each other well as the bad cop and good cop Nazis. Tracy Childs is superb as Klein and it’s easy to see why she eventually returned in a more regular role. McCoy and Aldred are both on top form and overall the cast make a really good job of what, to be honest, isn’t the most original of scripts.

But why am I so desperate to find the good in this release? It’s because it is a really difficult story to listen to – physically. The sound design on this is utterly atrocious. Interior scenes sound like they’ve been recorded in a metal box. Characters walk, accompanied by a clip clop sound effect. Background ‘wild tracks’ of prisoners chatting literally cut off dead when a main character starts talking. It is really, really bad and when there are audio stories which predate even Big Finish’s early releases that have better, more accomplished sound design it is surprising this was allowed out of Big Finish Towers. I’m also surprised more online reviews make barely a mention of it because, to my ears, it almost made the whole thing unlistenable.

It’s also the beginning of the rather odd narrative decision that BF took to have Ace start referring to herself as McShane in an attempt, I assume, to ‘mature’ the character. It doesn’t work and, I’m assuming BF realised this, as it doesn’t last past many 7/Ace releases. The maturing of Ace is achieved far more effectively with the introduction of Hex.

I do like Colditz. It contains a number of the tropes which have become common the World War Two stories and it isn’t the most original of stories but the cast make the best of it and Klein and her story are intriguing. The sound design is appalling but if you can ‘hear’ past it, it’s an enjoyable four episodes.

Byzantium! (complete with explanation mark) is a 1st Doctor novel featuring Ian, Barbara and Vicki and written by Keith Topping.

I’m a huge fan of the TV story The Romans. Byzantium! is set at the very beginning of that story between the initial scenes of the TARDIS tumbling into the ravine and the regulars have shacked up at a Roman villa.

This novel reveals that between those scenes, the TARDIS crew actually took a trip to Byzantium, a Greek city known for its multi-cultural population and, at this time, ruled by the Roman Empire.

Very early in the novel, the regulars are caught up in a horrific massacre and separated, each finding themselves alone in a strange world and relying on various people to help them adapt to what they believe to be their new lives. The Doctor falls in with a group of Christians, Barbara with the Pharisees, Vicki with a Greek family and Ian with the Roman governor responsible for the city on behalf of the Roman Emperor.

I did not enjoy this novel at all.

With the link to The Romans and the suggested historical aspect of early Christianity, I was intrigued by the book. As a Christian, reading a book where the Doctor encounters historical Christianity was something I was keen to read and to see how the Doctor’s attitude towards it was portrayed.

Fortunately, and probably unsurprisingly, the Doctor is portrayed as sceptical but sympathetic. He holds no stall in the actual beliefs, but shows great respect towards the believers. The First Doctor’s acerbic persona does allow for Topping to have the Doctor be rather disparaging of a trio of translators who are working on the Gospel of Mark, but this is very much pitched as one academic berating others for mistakes in their work, rather than any suggestion of an attack of the words being translated.

This was possible, for me, the most interesting and at times entertaining aspect of the novel. However, there was far much more that was wrong with this novel.

The first problem, for me, is that there are so many characters introduced so quickly that before long I was reading chapters having absolutely no idea who was who, what their relationships to each other were and what their role in the plot was. There are governors, centurions, wives, ex-wives, slaves, servants, Christians, Pharisees, Zealots, soldiers, Greeks and who knows what else. I found it almost impossible to follow what was happening, particularly the subplot that Ian is involved in – something about a planned coup on the part of a Roman general against the Roman governor – I think!

But worse than this, for me, was the characterisation of the TARDIS crew. Apart from the Doctor, the three companions are written in such a way as to be practically unrecognisable. Barbara’s character just about survives the novel intact but both Ian and Vicki are written in very odd, and at times frustrating, way – with Ian, in particular, reflecting almost nothing of William Russell’s performance or of the character as presented on screen.

There’s a chapter soon after Ian has ended up at the governor’s villa where he is hit on by different women. This, in itself, isn’t a problem but the way he reacts is completely out of character. He says things like ‘no way, darling’ which sound absolutely nothing like Ian. And then, throughout the book, he spouts various colloquialisms which make it sound as if Topping labours under the misapprehension that Russell portrayed Ian as a cockney wide-boy. Other examples of Ian’s odd dialogue include ‘peachy-fine’ and ‘pure dead easy’.

Vicki fairs slightly better but a lot of the time is written as a horrendously spoilt brat. The way she speaks to the family who have taken her into their house is nothing short of disrespectful and rude. There is nothing of Maureen O’Brien’s performance in the writing.

It’s not unusual for writers of Doctor Who books to sometimes struggle to characterise the regulars accurately. Generally, though, it just means that the Doctor and companions can come across a little generic with the odd character trait from the TV series thrown in here and there to remind us of who they are supposed to be. But in Byzantium! Topping seems to have decided to completely rewrite Ian and Vicki as entirely different characters. It’s very odd and very frustrating.

Byzantium! is structured very much like The Romans. The four regulars are separated early in the story and do not re-encounter each other till the very end. Each has their own story strand much as in The Romans (although there, the Doctor and Vicki remain together) but the main difference is that, in The Romans it is played for laughs (such as the Doctor missing Barbara by seconds in Nero’s palace), whereas here the emphasis is put on four people who assume the other three are dead and that they are stranded in this time (even the Doctor feels this as the TARDIS mysteriously disappears). It makes for a very dour companion piece to The Romans. It’s also a problem because it makes direct comparison with that story inevitable. Seeing as this story is set directly before those events it does seem a little odd to copy that story’s structure but make it less fun.

I came away from this book extremely disappointed, extremely frustrated and extremely confused by the choices Topping has made as an author. A real shame.