Teeth and Curls: He finds it helps to grin as broadly as he can when he starts to worry – which is what Elisabeth Sladen always used to say about his character and how Tom Baker accentuated the alien characteristics. The Doctor decides that Fever Island sounds a little ominous but let’s be honest this sort of title is like red rag to a bull to the Time Lord. What is it about the Bakers (Tom and Colin) bursting into poetic exclamations that just sounds so right? He’s met one or two evil geniuses in his time. The Doctor couldn’t sound any less interested in Jason Vane’s latest adventure, almost as if he knows that he has stumbled in on somebody else’s turf and is willing to back off and let him have the limelight. Tom Baker has always talked about the wit of James Bond villains and how that is the sort of wit that he enjoys in Doctor Who. It’s fitting then that he gets to play the bad guy in this story and ham it up as Okalov, Jason Vane’s nuttiest opponent. It’s a great opportunity for Tom to play something completely different and to go to town with it. How funny to hear the Doctor telling Jason Kane that he is a piece of fantasy and pure escapism. I almost wanted him to throw the compliment back at him. Does that mean that the Doctor dreams of being an insane supervillain? Sounds perfect for the fourth Doctor.
Bobby on the Beat: There’s a reason I have managed to fill an entire paragraph with commentary about K.9 below where Ann’s section remains bare. After the bombshell that was dropped in the previous story it is a shame that she has reverted to her previous irrelevance. It would have been quite nice to have a knowing sleeper agent in the TARDIS ala Charley Pollard or an assassin ala Turlough.
Metal Dog: How cute of K.9 to ask the Doctor and Ann what it is a like to dream. We come to accept K.9 as the Doctor’s companion and therefore give him all the emotional affection we would a person and so it rather sneaks up on me when I’m reminded that he is merely an automaton. Oddly asking this sort of wistful question, like Data from Star Trek, makes my heart go out for him more. Perhaps it is John Leeson’s lovable voice that imbues the character with such personality and warmth. The thought simply popped into his circuits and the Doctor is delighted at a gap in his dogs’ knowledge for a change. How is it that hearing John Leeson cry ‘Danger Master!’ takes you right back to the 70s effortlessly in a way that a thousand prequel/sequels to 70s never could? He wants to understand the power of imagination and fantasy, words that have been planted into his brain. His computer brain is vastly complex and leaves him susceptible to malign influences.
Standout Performance: It’s a wonderful cast all round, but huge kudos to Gethin Anthony as the silky-smooth Jason Vane and Carolyn Seymour who impressively plays two roles imperceptibly in the story.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘The scarred man still lives on Fever Island!’
‘Imagine the world shaped to the fantasies of a psychopath of some frothing demigod? Imagine the nightmares that would be unleashed?’
Great Ideas: Jason Vane faces assassins and despots at every turn and is trained to kill with the scantest of resources. After the war, the Commordore was recruited by the Kremlin and for three decades she has been their puppet at the heart of British intelligence. Imagine if this sort of twist had been revealed about M? It would shake the Bond universe to its core. The mist on the island is from another dimension. They created an aperture in the fabric of reality and subsequently the mist started coming through. All the clues were there to point out why Vane wasn’t at all who we thought he was and I thought the reveal was very nicely handled, with Anthony’s performance altering perfectly when the bombshell is dropped. Of course there was military funding involved in this madness.
Musical Cues: I love it when the music gets in on the twist, dropping away when the spy genre is stripped away.
Standout Scene: For once the cliff-hanger isn’t some faux danger that we know won’t kill the Doctor but instead a complete change of personality that suggests a really avenue to explore in the second episode. I always applaud writers who take a different approach with these pauses in the action, making the twist a narrative shift rather than the story just holding its breath in the middle of an action sequence. In one of the funniest moments of the range, K.9 blasts the Doctor a second time just to make sure that he’s back to normal.
Result: Apparently Doctor Who can turn its hand to anything, any genre or style, because of it’s malleable (lack of) format. Even James Bond. As Lance Parkin discovered in BBC Books’ Trading Futures and Jonathan Barnes realises here, the campy spy thriller genre is a brilliant hat for Doctor Who to try on and have a laugh with. Fever Island has all the hallmarks of a parody Bond story; a suave hero, a sadistic super villain, an unusually exotic location, ridiculously melodramatic danger, one liners, a stylish music and the Doctor. Hang on…the Doctor? What’s really impressive is how this works as both a Bond tale (or rather a Vane tale) and a Doctor Who story, exhibiting all the fun and frolics of a really good Graeme Williams tale and aping popular culture like a really good Hinchcliffe tale. There are some wonderful breaks in the conventions - the M substitute turns out to be a traitor, Vane’s narration can be heard by all and sundry to their disgust and the villain of the piece turns out to be…well that would be telling. A really fun script, very sure of its tone and with enough content to keep me entertained. This is a fourth Doctor season that hasn’t dropped the ball since it’s opener, is that really a possibility? I’ve dolled out 3, 7, 7, 7, 8 and 8 so far which automatically makes this the best average for a season of Tome Baker stories, whilst not being perfect. Some of the other seasons have had stronger individual stories but I am really enjoying how consistently entertaining this run has been. It’s avoiding that feeling on nonchalance that has plagued this range since day one. Long may John Dorney continue to script edit. Fever Island is a perky piece, very silly but blissfully enjoyable with every member of the production team in the know about the mood they are trying to create. Keep fantasising: 8/10
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