Every now and again my crazy journey through Doctor Who in order of it’s relationship to the chronology of Earth (as charted in Lance Parkin’s seminal A History volumes), meets a brand new episode in the same time zone I am working through. At the moment, I am working through the 1950s and last week, the 15th Doctor and his newest companion, Belinda, arrived in 1952 in the story, Lux.

I struggle a little to review stories as brand new as this in my marathon. Most of the stories are ones I have watched or listened to before, sometimes more than once (especially in the case of the classic series) and therefore I already have thoughts and opinions formed in my head.

A new episode is a different beast. I’m still formulating my thoughts on the episode as well as reading what everyone else thought. On the whole, this is an episode which seems to have gone down pretty well in general. The combination of animation and live action is unique for Doctor Who and the meta elements of the story, while obviously dividing opinion as that sort of thing often does, have at least made a relatively positive impact.

As a story set in the 1950s, but in Miami, this story evokes more the episodes of Quantum Leap I’m currently watching set in this era, than it does the stories from Doctor Who I’ve reviewed from this time – The Idiot’s Lantern and The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith are stories more rooted in the previous decade, and so are some of the audio stories like An Ordinary Life and The Creeping Death are ‘drab’ and ‘working class’ in their aesthetic.

Lux is vibrant and flashy. The bright colours of the diner; the magic of cinema with the deep reds of the upholstery and the curtains and the flickering images; and of course Mr Ring-a-Ding himself, bursting out of the cinema screen in all his technicolour glory. It’s a huge contrast from something like The Idiot’s Lantern which also sees an image on screen start to talk to its audience. In that, the Wire more or less stays black and white for the entire story (with a couple of brief exceptions) and this is in keeping with the focus on television which, of course, wouldn’t see colour for quite a while after the 50s. Lux, however, is about cinema and the sparkle of the USA at this time. Even when the story is showing us black and white films or Mr Pye’s wife steps out of a movie in black and white, colour is never far away – the films are always framed in the context of the red, plush auditorium and Mr Pye’s wife gently turns to colour as they dance (in a scene which has echoes of the film Pleasantville).

The mirroring of The Idiot’s Lantern continues in the fate of Mr Ring-a-Ding’s victims which isn’t a million miles from the fate of the Wire’s victims in the former story. All are pulled into the screen and condemned to a living death inside the TV or filmstock. And then it also happens to the Doctor and Belinda as they are dragged into the animated world.

I was very excited when it was revealed that the Doctor and Belinda were to be animated in this story. Obviously, it’s been done before in sci-fi and fantasy TV, notably in Farscape and Supernatural, and it also formed the whole basis of the 8th Doctor novel, The Crooked World, but it was still exciting to finally have scenes like this on screen in Doctor Who.

And I wasn’t disappointed – well, not completely. I was a little disappointed that the animated Doctor and Belinda stayed in one scene (a cool, night-time Miami) but the rest was what I had hoped for, even if, ultimately it was quite a short sequence. The most striking thing for me was how Gatwa and Sethu subtly adapt their performance style to suit the medium they are in. It’s ever so slightly stylised and forced and fits perfectly.

The story then takes a further sharp turn into being fully meta as we reach the, no doubt heading for infamy, ‘fan scene’. Pushing out of the screen, the Doctor and Belinda find themselves in an ordinary sitting room confronted by three Doctor Who fans who have been watching them on the television. The scene is packed with easter eggs and it’s fun but, on reflection, doesn’t really work in the narrative. It very clearly starts with a ‘the Doctor and Belinda are fictional characters’ perspective but then switches partway through with no lead in or narrative indication to the fans are fictional and part of the trap. It’s a switch that doesn’t work because it’s just a complete change from what it starts out establishing and there aren’t little clues or hints leading up to it. The perspective just changes because the story needs it to change and it means the scene loses some of its impact, charming though it is.

More successful, I thought, was the scene where the Doctor and Belinda think they’ve escaped back into the real world only to be confronted by a police officer and a bucket of racism. The Doctor realising the details are wrong meaning they are still trapped works well in a way the fan scene doesn’t.

The ‘meta’ element is obviously also reminiscent of last season’s second story The Devil’s Chord and this works as a companion piece to that not least from the fact that Maestro and Lux are both members of the Pantheon. But the fourth wall breaks, the Doctor and companion getting kitted out to a contemporary soundtrack and the general tone of the whole thing are very similar and echo the way that during his first tenure, RTD would often start each series with thematically similar stories (a present day, a future and a celebrity historical start Series 1, 2 and 3 and even though The Fires of Pompeii doesn’t have ‘celebrity’ status, Series 4 still follows that format). There definitely seems to be a style similarity, again, between the three stories at the start of Season 1 and Season 2.

The special effects in this story are excellent – Mr Ring-a-Ding is realised incredibly well in both his ‘Roger Rabbit’ 2D form and his ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ 3D form. Indeed his three-dimensional transformation is a thing of nightmare. Other effects such as the Doctor and Belinda approaching the screen and pushing against it to escape into the ‘real world’ are so convincing I was actually a little unsettled by the thought that they were about to climb into our living room. There was something about the clarity of the image and the stark white background that really worked.

The rest of the production is suitably polished as well from the performances, especially Linus Roache as Mr Pye, to the period trappings of the cinema, diner and costuming.  And of course, Alan Cumming is utterly brilliant as Mr Ring-a-Ding!

Historically, the fact that the story doesn’t shy away from the systemic racism of the time and the segregation of public spaces is great, particularly with our two leads now both being ‘of colour’. It’s handled really well by the script and builds a little on Dot and Bubble’s blunter and deliberately rug-pulling, but no less effective, inclusion.

The ending is, possibly, a little unsatisfying (especially with the echoes of ‘death + death = life’ from last year’s finale) with Mr-Ring-A-Ding ascending to the heavens and becoming light (brought to life by the God of Light as he was) and it remains to be seen where the Pantheon arc is taking us, but I have no issue with Gods in the Doctor Who universe as they have been a feature since the 60s so are not some anathema to the show’s central conceits.

Overall, though, this was a gorgeous, funny, exciting production which pushed at the edges of the envelope of what Doctor Who can do ever so slightly and continues to build around the brilliant relationship already struck up between Gatwa’s 15th Doctor and Sethu’s wonderful Belinda Chandra.

Return to the Web Planet is a charming tale which extrapolates various details from The Web Planet to craft a new, yet familiar story.  The 5th Doctor and Nyssa arrive on Vortis when, again, the TARDIS is forced down on the planet.  Now, of course, it is a jungle world (as re-established in The Naked Flame) but they are soon at the mercy of the Zarbi again when they get caught in a stampede and have to be rescued by two Menoptra.

The two Menoptra, a father and daugher called Acheron and Hedyla, are living away from the Menoptra cities partly because Hedyla is wingless and, as such, shunned by society and considered ugly.  This builds nicely on the wingless Menoptra of The Web Planet who are victims of torture and the wingless Menoptra in The Naked Flame, who is also considered 'second-class'.  The Zarbi are apparently behaving strangely and Nyssa has spotted a human in the jungle.

The mystery builds nicely with Acheron and the Doctor travelling to the Zarbi hive with the Doctor riding a Zarbi called Arbara so he can keep up with the flying Acheron.  The idea that Arbara's name has entered Menoptran culture is a lovely additional detail.  At the hive they discover a second human who has become absorbed into the hive mind.

There is a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and eventually the story ends in a mass Zarbi mating!  The development of the Zarbi is one of this story's strengths with mass migrations influenced by gravitational forces, hive minds and the story ending with human-zarbi hybrids.  The Menoptra aren't developed as much with Acheron and Hedyla very much fitting the mould of characters like Prapillus and Hlynia from The Web Planet but they are played very well by Sam Kelly and Julie Buckfield.

The strength of Return to the Web Planet is that it continues that story's admirable attempt to develop an alien ecosystem and adds details which make a lot of sense - the gravitational forces are centred around a 'lode seed'; Acheron's tower where he and his daughter live, is made out of paper - created by the Zarbi in a way similar to how wasps make nests.  There is also the inclusion of the poetry prevalent in The Web Planet's script with talk, in this story, of the overland (space) and spacecraft being referred to as ships and their pilots as sailors.  Hedyla also can't pronounce Nyssa's name, using a warped version like Arbara and Heron were used in The Web Planet.

And yes, the Zarbi bleeping is still present - but strangely comforting and reassuring (and evocative, helping to further connect this story to its progenitor).

The 5th Doctor and Nyssa are a perfect TARDIS pairing for this story with their close relationship, bound by science and compassion, mirrored beautifully in the similar relationship between Acheron and Hedlya.  Davison and Sutton are on good form as is usual.  Matthew Noble and Claire Wyatt have less to do as the two stranded humans but work well in their roles.

All in all this is a worthy sequel to the original story and proof, I feel, that there are more stories that could be told about this strange, insectoid world of Vortis.

Before listening to this Companion Chronicle, I had wondered about the title and the reason behind it. The blurb made it clear that this was a story set in pre-war Berlin with the 1st Doctor and Susan experiencing the beginnings of the facist regime which would give rise to the Second World War.

Where did alchemy fit into this? I’ll admit, I would often misremember the title and conflate it both with ‘the Anarchists’ and with the other Companion Chronicle: The Anachronauts.

But it is all to do with gold. Gold to fund power and bring about the reparation that Germany so desperately desires in a time of immense hardship and bitterness resulting from the Treaty of Versailles.

I’m pretty well-versed in what Germany was made to do as a result of the First World War due to teaching it to 10 and 11 year olds on a yearly basis. We start our lessons on the Second World War looking at what happened at the end of the First World War and thinking about how a man like Hitler came to power and the promises he made in light of Germany’s punishment.

The Alchemists clearly depicts this period of German history and presents a country on an inevitable path. With ‘brown shirts’ (proto-Nazi/SS types) patrolling the streets; barely-concealed contempt and outright racism towards Jews and an almost obsessive desire to learn a way to extract gold from anywhere, it’s a horrible place that Susan finds herself in.

The Doctor very much disappears into the background of the story. A desire to visit a scientific conference – echoes of The Mark of the Rani – leads him to being kidnapped and Susan left abandoned in a foreign land. A simple conceit allows her to have plenty of local currency to pay her way but it is the people she meets along the way that decide her fate and lead to some unpleasant situations where she is interrogated.

It’s quite a linear story. The Doctor and Susan arrive, visit the science conference, the Doctor is kidnapped, Susan meets a British artists , is drugged, ends up in the company of the brown shirts, finds the Doctor and they leave.

There is a little time spent on considering whether history can be changed and it directly addresses the Doctor’s stance in The Aztecs (with the conceit that Susan is writing this story as a letter to Barbara and Ian) but apart from that I didn’t feel there was a huge amount of depth to the story.

It does touch upon how the evil of Nazism is creeping into the society and Susan does reflect on the fate of a child she meets who she suspects will be old enough to fight in the war when it arrive in a few years time but I do feel a little more could have been done with it. Maybe it’s the choice of narrator for this story. Susan’s naivety doesn’t really allow for it and there is a sense that Carole Ann Ford is fighting the script a little. There’s a sense that the actress wants to imbue Susan with more outrage at the society she finds herself than the script actually portrays. Carole Ann was born in 1940 so her relationship with the Second World War will be extremely personal I imagine.

Of course WW2 and the events which caused it were not something the TV series was ever likely to tackle during her time on the show with it being far too recent an event and far too personal to the people involved in making the show. Indeed, it took until 1989 before there was a story actually set during WW2. Even the War Games shied away from that period, only managing to dip its toes into WW1.

With this being a pre-Unearthly Child story there is a rather nice scene where the TARDIS materialises in Berlin and has disguised itself as a continental cylindrical advertising pillar. There is a lovely touch where the posters ‘pasted’ on it are blurred and out-of-focus. It’s a brilliant image and a clever way of playing with a concept from the TV series that we never actually saw (aside from Attack of the Cybermen).

Overall, The Alchemists is quite a matter-of-fact approach to the events occuring in Germany during this time which would lead them along the path to war. It will be interesting to see how other stories set in this pre-war period deal with the upcoming events. I expect a lot of foreshadowing in those focussed on the countries involved but possibly, as with World War One, a number of stories for which the world events barely get mentioned.

The story has some interesting elements, good performances from Carole Ann Ford and supporting artist, Wayne Forester (in a dual role) and a sense of history playing out but I didn’t feel this was an essential Companion Chronicle meeting the high standard often set by this range.

William Shakespeare is probably one of this country’s most famous historical figures. Being that he is associated with the performing arts, it’s only natural that a show as steeped in literature as Doctor Who would want to visit the great man himself. Until the new series however, the Doctor’s relationship with the Bard was restricted to fuzzy images on the Time-Space Visualiser and witty Douglas Adams one liners (or 'surprise' appearances in a couple of audios).

The new series’ penchant for ‘celebrity historicals’ seems heavily biased towards writers probably, as I say, because of how Doctor Who is tied into literature – borrowing ideas left, right and centre from a wealth of classic plays, novels, films and even, in the more modern era, television itself. Shakespeare is even more appropriate due to his own habit of borrowing heavily from already existing myths, stories and other plays.

Each of the encounters has revolved, at least partly, around a mystery involving the writer; Agatha Christie’s disappearance; the ending of Dicken’s unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood and with Shakespeare, the lost play – Love Labour’s Won.

Taking this as the core of the plot, The Shakespeare Code is packed with educational content. We find out about Shakespeare’s life, his plays and Tudor life in general. The script is littered with references to his work, some factually and some through in-jokes.

Historically we are told about the Globe theatre and even meet it’s real life architect, Peter Streete (although his death by Carrionite is, unsurprisingly, a fictional addition). The shape of the Globe – a tetradecagon – is central to the plot.

We are also presented with a fairly accurate representation of how Shakespeare’s plays were considered in their time – as populist entertainment. People nowadays forget that Shakespeare’s plays were the equivalent of our television and film. He wrote dirty jokes, he wrote sequels, everyone from the poor to the rich experienced what the Bard had to offer. The only misstep is the idea that people visited the theatre at night. Plays were always performed during daylight hours being as artificial light was a little way off invention.

Included in this wealth of historical fact are two real contemporaries of Shakespeare, William Kempe and Richard Burbage, and mention of the fact that Tudor plays were all-male affairs with men dragging up to play the female roles.

We also have the presence of the Master of the Revels, basically the Tudor censor board for plays. Although the character himself, Lynley, is a fictional person (presumably because he dies at the hands of Lilith), the role and attitude are very much historical fact.

References to Shakespeare’s plays litter the dialogue and visuals: the three witches from Macbeth are reflected in the three Carrionites; the Doctor quotes from As You Like It and Hamlet, among other plays, as well as mentioning the Sycorax (a name which Shakespeare uses for an unseen character in The Tempest); The Elephant Inn is a reference to Twelfth Night and there is implication that the ‘Dark Lady’ referred to in Shakespeare’s sonnets could be Martha.

Shakespeare’s life is commented on including his wife, Anne and his son Hamnet who had died from the Black Death. The subject of Shakespeare’s sexuality is considered briefly (with another great line of dialogue from the Doctor) and comments about Dean Lennox Kelly looking nothing like the usual images of Shakespeare – all bald head and collar ruff are played with, alongside the deliberate inclusion of a Midlands accent for the Stratford-upon-Avon born playwright.

Tudor life is superbly presented in costume, location work and set design. The opening scenes showing London Bridge are like the artwork from A Groatsworth of Wit brought to life. The timber framed buildings (filmed, I believe, in Warwick) are incredibly atmospheric and the interior sets are full of detail. The whole production has feels cohesive with no one aspect feeling artificial or out of place. A problem I had with The Vampires of Venice was that, at times, I didn’t feel like I was witnessing the period but a modern representation of it. I didn’t think the supporting artists felt convincing enough and there was something about Trogir which, whilst impressive, didn’t ‘quite’ feel like Venice.

I have no such complaint about Tudor London. Maybe its because it’s a period that is easier to evoke in our own country what with the number of period buildings still standing and maybe it’s because I’ve been wallowing in Tudor atmosphere already through Point of Entry and A Groatsworth of Wit. Certainly the supporting artists convince far more of being from the requisite period. Admittedly the night time setting of the story helps enormously with the atmosphere.

The Shakespeare Code feels like a story written by a long time fan of the series (as indeed Gareth Roberts is). It is one of those tales which ‘explains’ magical happenings with scientific reasoning as in stories like The Daemons. This, I’ve always felt, is something that Doctor Who has always enjoyed doing. As a series, it is really science fantasy and leans towards ‘magic’ far more than other ‘science fiction’ series such as Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. But, within it’s own rules, there cannot actually be magic and therefore there needs to be an explanation for the devil or magic spells or witches or dragons. To be honest, these explanations are usually fairly pat. ‘The Power of Words’ doesn’t really explain why the Carrionites magic spells work and often, as in this case, a reference to psychic energy is thrown in – which is basically saying ‘it’s magic’. I don’t have a problem with this, though, as it’s the sandpit that Doctor Who has always played in and it allows for fun stories involving witches, vampires and werewolves.

The performances in the story are excellent, particulaly main guest stars Dean Lennox Kelly as Shakespeare and Christina Cole as Lilith. Even small roles such as Dolly Bailey and Shakespeare’s fellow actors convince throughout (in fact I only really noticed how good Kempe and ‘Dick’ were this time round, in their brief scenes together – they’re actually very funny). The two mothers are a little ‘over the top’ but I think when playing ugly witches, you can allow a bit of scenery chewing.

The obvious influence on this story is Shakespeare in Love. The whole ‘sexy’ Shakespeare aspect and slightly comedic slant spins off from that film and it even includes a cameo from Queen Elizabeth I at the end. There is also a little nod to Silver Nemesis when the arrow embeds itself in the TARDIS door (and that’s another story with a cameo from a Queen Elizabeth). There are lots of more obvious references throughout the script and my absolute favourite is the Doctor’s use of Back to the Future to explain to Martha something which it took the Fourth Doctor a whole TARDIS trip to explain to Sarah Jane in Pyramids of Mars (I particularly like his sarcastic retort to Martha’s query of ‘the film?’; ‘No, the novelisation! Yes, the film!’. It’s all very metatextual which is fitting for a story about a lost Shakespeare play.

When I originally watched this story on broadcast I remember being a little underwhelmed. This time I enjoyed it a lot more, probably, as I have said, because I’m revelling in the Tudor period at the moment. That said, however, I did find the ending a little ‘easy’. The Carrionites, in their ‘normal’ form are a little difficult to get a handle on visually as they flit around the screen very quickly. The ending does seem a little glib and the use of ‘expelliarmus’ is maybe the one time the ‘metatextual’ nature of the story goes one step too far.

All’s well that ends well, though (sorry….) and overall I think this story is an excellent example of new series Who. It’s funny, but received fan wisdom seems to have it that Series 3 isn’t very good – Martha is no Rose or Donna, the finale with the Master is rubbish and the season includes fairly ‘bad’ stories such as Daleks in Manhattan, The Lazarus Experiment and 42. Oddly, at the time of broadcast I remember my wife and I commenting that we felt Series 3 was the best yet and we really enjoyed the variety of stories. Series 3 gave us Blink and Human Nature and I also adore Gridlock and actually think 42 is alright, loved The Sound of Drums (although I’ll concede that Last of the Time Lords is a bit of a let down). The Shakespeare Code has improved on repeated viewings for me and consequently I do feel that Series 3 is a unfairly maligned.

The 4th Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith return to Vortis and discover a new menace is trying to emerge in The Naked Flame, a comic strip from one of the DWM Yearbooks.

This is a concise story which uses the trappings of Vortis and the Menoptra to good effect.  The Menoptra themselves are updated slightly from their 60s appearance although the female Menoptra, Jresta, is certainly more buxom than the originals!  The principal male Menoptra, Vursus (occasionally spelt Versus in the text) is very much in the mould of Captain Hilio from The Web Planet - all bravado and masculine energy.

Vortis itself is a more verdant environment which fits with The Web Planet's description of how the Animus destroyed the flora of the planet.  The menace at the centre of this story is a sentient crystal which is attracting Menoptra towards it with its light and destroying them in the process.  It ties in nicely with the end of The Web Planet and also states that the Clynex (the crystal) was subdued by the Animus and is now reasserting its control.

The artwork in this is a bit hard on the eyes and there is one very, very bizarre shot of the Doctor where is is grinning into the frame.  I do like the way the Menoptra are drawn though.

Not the most in-depth exploration of Vortis-lore but a fun diversion all the same.

A fun title, a great TARDIS team and an appearance from Clement Atlee are all elements of this fun comic strip from Doctor Who Adventures.

The 10th Doctor and Donna arrive in Battersea 1951 and find themselves hunting a mysterious blob which is terrorising the locals. The police constable who alerts them to the problem mysteriously disappears and then they meet Edna, a unassuming housewife.

Unsurprisingly, the constable and Edna both turn out to be the blob in human disguise. It is a shape-shifter but it is trying to actually find a way to prevent her kind from invading the planet having realised the horror of what they do. Doctor Who Adventures’ comic stories often have a grotesque monster that turns out to be misunderstood but this one actually does something with it, using Edna, and her partner, to help save the day when the blobs attack Parliament and take over the Prime Minister, Clement Atlee.

The 10th Doctor and Donna are written fairly well – and the image of Donna driving a motorbike and sidecar is huge fun.

Unusually, this story is told across three issues of the magazine which gives the story time to breathe and to establish the setting pretty well. It’s dark, a little fogbound and does give a good sense of time and place.

All in all, a fun comic strip.

The first season of Big Finish’s Early Adventures had a selection of stories set across the First Doctor’s three seasons. This story, An Ordinary Life, builds on the ‘gap’ carved into the middle of The Dalek’s Masterplan by a trilogy of Companion Chronicles featuring Sara Kingdom. Here we have an, almost, full cast story set in this gap with the Doctor, Steven and Sara on the run from the Daleks with the taranium core. The TARDIS is forced down to Earth in 1953 and, when the Doctor and the TARDIS go missing, Steven and Sara are forced to live ‘an ordinary life’ in London.

The first two episodes focus mainly on Steven and Sara adjusting to life in 1950s London. They have been taken in by a black family, two of whom – Michael and Audrey Newman – have only just arrived from Jamaica. Audrey’s uncle, Joseph, is the nominal head of the family and it is he who brings the Doctor, Steven and Sara off the cold, winter street into their home.

The Newmans, and Joseph, are unsurprisingly the target of blatant racism. This is something Steven and Sara find difficult to get their head around and the script does a good job of showing how normalised it is in society. There’s a sobering line about a local landlord not allowing black people to rent rooms (like the Newman’s landlord does) not because she is racist, but because her neighbours are.

Although the focus is on Steven and Sara adapting to their new lives, there is an element of strangeness given via the character of Michael, who is clearly behaving in an odd way. Even though he manages to get Steven a job alongside him at the docks, it is clear Audrey and Joseph both think he is behaving oddly.

As the story progresses, and it moves into episodes three and four, his oddness is explained by the fact he is not the real Michael, but a ‘changeling’ grown from a strange anemone creature the real Michael made contact with on his trip over from Jamaica. Here the story becomes a more straightforward ‘invasion of the bodysnatchers’ affair although it is no less engaging and exciting because of it.

This is a great story for Sara, in particular (and I am writing this review only a couple of days after the sad passing of Jean Marsh). She gets fun scenes such as trying to cook alongside Steven and attempting to get a job at the local police station and getting locked up for her troubles. Later, she gets her fair share of action scenes, protecting Josetta, Audrey and Michael’s daughter, and facing off against changeling copies of Michael, Audrey and Steven. Jean Marsh, although sounding quite obviously older than her time in the show, tackles the script with energy and grit.

One thing that really struck me listening to this was how brilliant Peter Purves is as the Doctor. There was a scene between the Doctor and Sara later in the story when I realised I had completely forgotten Purves was performing the role, so engrossed in the scene was I and so convinced I was listening to the 1st Doctor and Sara having a conversation.

Although the ‘aliens’ aspect of this story may be a fairly well-trod road, this is a great story populated by great characters played by an excellent cast. Ram John Holder (Porkpie from the classic sitcom, Desmonds) plays Joseph with defiant aplomb and Damian Lynch (who has done a lot of work for Big Finish) and Sara Powell (who played Mary Seacole in War of the Sontarans) are brilliant as Michael and Audrey. Steven Critchlow plays the rest of the supporting cast – which does lead to some of them sounding a bit too similar but he does well as the less savoury characters.

Definitely recommended.

The Banquo Legacy is an unusual Doctor Who novel, but also a very good one. It details the Doctor, Fitz and Compassion’s troubles in England, 1898 when they are forced down by Time Lord technology.

What makes this novel unusual is that very little of the book is from the point of view of any of our regulars. The entire books, save for short sections at the beginning and the end, is written as accounts from two contemporaries of 1898 – John Hopkinson, a lawyer, and Stratford, a police inspector.

The story alternates between their written reports driving the story forwards and often relaying the same events from their different points of view.

Hopkinson has been invited to Banquo Manor to witness a scientific experiment by a man called Richard Harries. Also in attendance are Harries’s sister, Catherine; the owner of the house, George Wallace and his wife, Elizabeth; Harries’s fiancee Susan Seymour; the butler Simpson and the maid Beryl.

Stratford arrives at the manor to investigate the death of Harries when the experiment goes horribly wrong. His investigations into the death are superceded, however, by the strange development of events involving further deaths and the reanimation of Harries’s charred, deformed corpse.

And in amongst all this are the out of place figures of Dr Friedlander and his associate Herr Kreiner. Having been stranded here, the Doctor adopts the guise of Dr Friedlander and, accompanied by Fitz, gatecrash the scientific demonstration.

But what of Compassion. Cleverly, she, as a human TARDIS in trouble, has latched on to a nearby human, close in form to Compassion herself, and merged with her as a safety protocol. Consequently, Compassion ‘becomes’ Harries’s fiancee Susan Seymour.

Unfortunately, this does leave the book Compassion-less for most of its word count. This is a shame because I don’t know that I’ve ever really got a handle on Compassion as a companion but there are some parts where Compassion’s personality reasserts itself over Susan’s which result in interesting reactions from the other characters.

However, without Compassion, we should be left with the Doctor and Fitz as our familar touchstones. But with the way the book is written from the point of view of Hopkinson and Stratford, they actually feature less in the book than a reader may expect. In fact, the Doctor disappears wholesale part way through and Fitz often lurks in the background rather than being front and centre to the story.

Stratford is more concerned with the death of Harries and Hopkinson has his own private agenda, both of which dominate the story, as well as both men pursuing the affections of Susan Seymour. The Doctor and Fitz remain elusive figures that neither man can really get a handle on and so we, as readers, become more familiar with the characters that are familiar to the two narrators – particularly Baker, Stratford’s local police colleague.

Another elusive figure in the story is the vaguely mysterious butler, Simpson. He hides quite a large secret which has implications for the overall story arc of this period of 8th Doctor novels. The revelation of his identity does get slightly lost in the telling as it is coming from the point of view of Hopkinson and Stratford who, understandably, don’t fully understand the implications of what the Doctor and Fitz realise about him.

So, a Doctor Who story that doesn’t feature the regulars front and centre and one that is told from the point of view of two guest characters might sound like a recipe for disaster. However, if the modern TV show has taught us anything, it’s that ‘Doctor-lite’ stories can be hugely successful. Whilst this isn’t really a ‘Doctor-lite’ in the same way as stories such as Blink or Turn Left, or even previous novels which played with the format such as Birthright, this does almost push the Doctor, Fitz and Compassion into the background. The ‘science-fiction’ elements are brushed over because the narrators can’t truly comprehend what is happening and the Doctor doesn’t offer any concrete explanations for what is going on at the manor house.

But, despite all this, The Banquo Legacy is an excellent read. It tears along at a thrilling pace, aided by the regular switching between narrators. Hopkinson, with his hidden agenda, and dependable and open-minded Stratford and his developing bond with Baker, are great characters to be in the company of and the rest of the guest cast add colour.

Although the Doctor and Fitz aren’t hugely present, they are still written well and the 8th Doctor in particular, sings from the page. It’s a credit to Justin Richards and Andy Lane, the dual authors of this book, that the book feels so cohesive bearing in mind the fact that they did as one might expect, each write one of the two narrators. It’s also quite mad that this started life as a non-Doctor Who TV concept that Richards and Lane dusted off when Rebecca Levene’s planned novel, Freaks, fell through. As a story it feels like it has Doctor Who at its core, what with the uncanny central mystery, the Victorian winter setting and the upstairs/downstairs cast of characters. That said, Richards, in particular, is an author who I feel can’t help to be influenced by Who. His range of children’s books – The Invisible Detective – also have a Doctor Who vibe and riff on quite a few concepts from the series. Normally, I find Richards’ books a bit underwhelming but this one is easily one of my favourites – although I’ve always enjoyed Lane’s work, so maybe that helps to balance out Richards’ prose.

This was a novel I didn’t go into with huge expectations, partly I think because I knew of its rather rushed production, but it was a good read and, I think, something of a palate cleanser before the ‘finale’ of The Ancestor Cell.

After The Lair of Zarbi Supremo and The Sons of the Crab, I didn't think the annual stories could get any odder.  But along comes The Lost Ones.

The Doctor arrives on Vortis and it is made evident he has never been here before.  This is his first visit (in The Lair of Zarbi Supremo he is heading for Vortis and knows the planet by name even if he is unfamiliar with the inhabitants).  The Doctor of the previous Vortis-set story steers closer to the TV characterisation of curiosity and an openness to alien species.  The Doctor of this story is a xenophobic, insect-hating bigot!  In Lair, he reacts with calmness and curiosity when encountering Zarbi and Menoptera.  Here he only meets the Menoptera and they literally make his skin crawl.  A huge amount of the word count is given over to describing their insect-related appearance and how horrid the Doctor considers this.  The Menoptera are also written as cold, unwelcoming aliens intent on dissecting the Doctor to find out why he is different to them.  This isn't how aliens were ever presented in Doctor Who, let alone the Menoptera.  When stories in those first two seasons went out of there way to depict alien races as people whether the Sensorites, the Menoptera or the Aridians.  These are not the Menoptera of the The Web Planet and one wonders if the writer had even seen the story before writing this.  It feels as if these characters could be any random alien race especially as the story then takes a massive left turn when the Doctor is rescued from the Menoptera by an 8 foot tall white-faced, red-haired giant and taken back to a gleaming spaceship buried under the planet.

And this is when it gets really weird.

The giant is a member of a crew from a spaceship which set off from Atlantis.  Yes, this giants are Atlanteans on a mission to colonise the galaxy.  They have already left colonists on various planets but crash-landed on Vortis and having lost their Master Scientist to illness are in desperate need of the Doctor's help.

In trying to determine whether he is human or a weird insect mutation, they do something which I'm not sure is a visual image of the 1st Doctor I ever needed - they strip him naked.

After spending six days trying to help them repair their ship, the Doctor then changes his mind and makes a bolt for it, finding himself in the middle of a pitched battle between Menoptera and Zarbi!  The pursuing Atlanteans are killed by the Zarbi and the Doctor escapes.

The entire Atlantean element seems like an entirely separate story squeezed into a Web Planet prequel and the two parts just don't gel.  It's not helped by the bizarre characterisation of the Doctor.  In a way it follows on from the version of the Doctor from The Sons of the Crab - where he is also treated like a laboratory specimen to be poked, prodded and experimented upon - but here he is written even more extremely than in the previous story.

Oddly, beyond the off-kilter characterisation of the Menoptera, the aspects of Menoptera/Zarbi relations actually tie in pretty well with the TV story.  The Zarbi are/were the Menoptera's 'cattle' but fell under the control of a malign influence (here it is Zarbi queens rather than the Animus).  The battle scene at the end is reminiscent of the battle scenes in The Web Planet.

Sadly, this isn't a very enjoyable story, mainly because the Doctor is so horrid throughout the entire thing.  It's as if the writer saw one scene of the Doctor being an irritable jerk in An Unearthly Child and nothing beyond it.  Hard to recommend.

The Sons of the Crab is a distinctly odd story.  It involves the 1st Doctor arriving on a planet in the Crab Nebula and finding weird mutated creatures all over the place and a group of scientists trying to solve the dilemma of their race's mutations, all holed up in lead-lined bunkers.

The most striking feature of this story is how 'out of character' the Doctor is.  He is very much on the back foot throughout this entire story and treated like a laboratory specimen for almost the entire length.  He is amusingly frustated by his impotence throughout.  He is also categorically human and from Earth!  This is mentioned by the story more than once in his interactions with the Yend, the race on this distant planet in the Crab Nebula.  As such he is seen as a figure of intense fascination for the Yend due to his ability to remain 'rigid', i.e. remain in his 'normal' form continually; something they cannot do without the aid of drugs.  It's always odd seeing these sort of assumptions made about the Doctor but we have to remember that in 1965, when this was published, very little was known about who the Doctor was or where he had come from.  This is also the era of TV Comic's outings where, again, the Doctor acts quite differently to the way he does on TV and is often assumed to be human in origin.  In this story, the Doctor also wears a monocle - not something seen on TV but something not unlike the pince-nez worn by Peter Cushing in the movie version of Dr Who and the Daleks which released three months before this annual hit the shelves.  It really is fascinating seeing how the character was interpreted in those early days.  It's also very, very odd to see the Doctor described as acting 'stupidly', not once but twice in the story (although I imagine it is being used in terms of its meaning of 'in a dazed way' rather than lacking in intelligence.

The story is little more than lengthy exposition, most significantly from Fomal, the Chief Yend, who explains to the Doctor what has befallen his people.  It seems they chose, as biologists, to meddle with nature but the arrival of intense radiation from a star, corrupted their experiments and now the entire race is incapable of holding its form and inflicted by rapid, constant mutations.  Some of the imagery given for the changes that overcome the Yend is very reminiscent from that seen in Wild Blue Yonder.

The Doctor does eventually agree, at the very last second, to transport a box of test tube babies to propagate the Yend away from the malign influence of their own planet.  But they all die in 'the transition'.  What's not made clear is what this transition is but I assumed it was the box crossing the threshold of the TARDIS (which ironically ties in a little with a couple of story elements in the Give-a-Show Projector series particularly The Prehistoric Monster).  It seems that the Doctor, or should I say Dr Who, is almost unique in his ability to travel in the TARDIS.  This story seems to have a lot to say about genetic engineering - and very little of it is good.

After reading this in the annual itself, I also listened to the narrated version read by Dan Starkey on the BBC release Timewake and Other Stories.  Starkey does an excellent job bringing a very wordy story to life and embues the Doctor with just the right amount of Hartnell's performance.

An odd but not unenjoyable experience.