Colony in Space written by Malcolm Hulke and directed by Michael E. Briant

This story in a nutshell: Trapped between miners and colonists, the Doctor tries to negotiate a peace, uncover the secret of the primitives and deal with the Master…

Good Grief: Let’s not forget what an exciting prospect it is for the Doctor to have the (apparent) freedom to travel in time and space again. A rare (for this period of the show) appearance of the Time Lords sees them discussing his worth to them and reveals their plan to dangle a carrot in front of him and see if he will follow it to Exarius. Naturally he jumps at the chance, this being the one liberty he has longed for for nearly two years. Rather than attempting to soothe Jo as she is wrenched away from everything she has ever known, the Doctor seems utterly indifferent to her plight at first, hands in pockets and reacting with smugness to her baffled questions. It’s as if his time trapped amongst humanity has robbed him of his compassion. It’s only when he starts talking wistfully about his life travelling the universe before he was exiled to Earth that I saw something of that Doctorish twinkle in his eye again. The Doctor sums up the colonists plight in about five seconds and throws the harsh truth of their imminent starvation in their faces. He’s not just some kind of scientist, he’s every kind of scientist. Pertwee’s Doctor is so fond of a tipple usually that I was surprised when he was left in a room with a decanter full of something noxious looking that he didn’t break it open and start helping himself. Ever the showman, Pertwee performs a magic trick for the sake of the Primitives although why he does so with blazing madness in his eyes is unknown. He tells his arch nemesis that he is not here on the behest of the Time Lords, that nobody sends him anywhere and he is a free agent. Bless him. The Master attempts to lure the Doctor onto his side by questioning why he should remain loyal to the Time Lords after they exiled him to Earth. It is nice to see this being brought up time and again, it really feels as though the show is serialised now. The mentions of his exile add depth but don’t interfere with the storytelling, much like the Time War in the New Series. The Doctor wants to see the universe and not rule it.

Dippy Agent: There’s an interesting approach to how the Doctor’s assistants join in the early seventies with Liz Shaw not entering the TARDIS at all (at least on screen) and it taking Jo Grant until her fourth story to step through those doors and be whisked off into time and space (or a rather colourless quarry). The norm is for characters to be taken on a whirlwind adventure immediately but in Jo’s case she steps inside an alien spacecraft (Claws of Axos) before she does the TARDIS. It means episode one of Colony in Space takes through those stages of disbelief and horror a full 14 episodes after we first met Jo and gotten to know her, this twist on the usual routine providing a little spike of interest in her character towards the end of her first year. We’ve seen many different reactions to the TARDIS; bafflement (Steven), joy (Vicki), wonder (Ben & Polly), sanctuary (Victoria) and potential (Zoe) but this is the first time since Ian & Barbara tripped over the threshold that a companion has been genuinely terrified by the prospect of being taken from their home, perhaps for good. It is not until Tegan that we again see such a natural reaction to the life changing potential of the TARDIS. After nearly a year of dealing with monsters and villains Jo can spot a bad egg a mile off and has instant suspicions about Winton. This being her first exploration off planet, Jo is appalled to learn that the TARDIS has been lost. Her course in escapology finally comes in handy, on some alien rock tied to an explosive device (I bet she never saw that one coming!). Why is Jo’s automatic reaction to a shock to grab her head with both hands and scream?

The Bearded Wonder: It takes him four episodes to show up so you might be forgiven for thinking that his presence is not essential this time around but as soon as there is talk of an Adjudicator suspicions run high. Of course it is a delight to see Roger Delgado and he adds some much needed charm to this faceless cowboys vs Indians tale. One of my favourite moments in the story is when the Master is deliberating on the political nightmare that is taking place on Exarius and is completely unaware of the Doctor and Jo’s presence when they sudden walk through the door and blow his cover. His little cough of embarrassment and the way he tries to cover his surprise is delightful. How he switches sides depending on who is in power and gives him the best chance of uncovering the doomsday weapon made me chuckle. The Master’s TARDIS might be slightly more advanced than the Doctor’s but the only addition I noticed was a rather fetching filing cabinet. I always enjoy when the villainy drops away and the Doctor and the Master engage each other as equals. The last episode features the two Time Lords unpicking the puzzle of the (apparently not so) Primitive City. Although he would never truly take the Master up on his offer of galactic conquest, the arch villain does at least try and tailor his argument with a benevolent spin.

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘I’ve been chained to a bomb, hunted and shot at. As far as I’m concerned the war’s already started!’

‘You’ve just committed professional suicide.’

‘I’m offering you a half share in the universe!’

The Good:

• I love the design of the colonists dome and individual homes because the designers has resisted the urge to inject an element of space age fashion into the sets because it is set in the future and instead really though through what a base of operations would look like if a rag tag bunch of humans set up on another planet with very few supplies. The look is functional, aesthetically bare and utilitarian. Their clothing is basic, their homes are all fold down beds, flat pack furniture and potted herbs and they carry real hand guns and rifles. The overall effect is an authentic human colony that has reached desperation point.
• Malcolm Hulke can always be relied to populate his stories with naturalistic characters, people that you can believe in. The rumbling of discontent between the colonists could be horribly clichéd in other writers hands but Hulke uses their mutinous babble to paint a picture of the grey, functional world back on the Earth. When we are informed that the colonists didn’t have any room on the Earth but now they own land (albeit land that is being sabotaged by IMC) you can see why what they have is worth fighting for. Plus the line ‘all our savings have gone into this!’ is the sort of adult prospect that Doctor Who usually avoids. When IMC arrives Morgan informs the audience that there is enough mineral wealth on the planet to build over a million housing units back on Earth, which makes their claim on the planet seem like the more appropriate one. That is until we realise that the planet has become the equivalent of a factory farm, people living in confined spaces because the population has gotten out of all control. The last thing the Earth needs is to become more industrialised. Hulke builds an ugly picture of our future, one which strikes me as realistic if we keep building and procreating at an out of control rate.
• Briant manages to brew up quite a tight, claustrophobic atmosphere in the first couple of episodes; the Leesons being attacked by some kind of giant reptile (the POV shot as it approaches a screaming Jane Leeson is very dramatic) and The net result is that beyond the hardships of near famine this is an extremely hostile place to live.
• Malcolm Hulke loves populating his stories with a mass of characters and they are all very well served by pragmatic dialogue and well cast by Michael E. Briant. Whilst I have to continually remind myself that John Ringham played the High Priest of Sacrifice in The Aztecs (a performance so at odds with his one as Ashe they are barely recognisable as being played by the same actor), he turns in a convincing performance as an ineffectual leader and man who refuses to face the problems that his colony is facing. Morris Perry provides a memorable nasty, a truly emotionless corporate face that doesn’t give a shit about the loss of life as long as he gets the job done and the money in his back pocket. He represents everything that the Doctor sets out to defeat; greed, selfishness and deadly. Dent barely betrays a single emotion throughout the story, keeping his boiling rage locked beneath an outwardly relaxed surface. In comparison Bernard Kay’s Caldwell is the odd man out, the one who wound up in the wrong job and is too humane to put into effect the terrible assignments expected by the management. There’s a terrific exchange that shows why Caldwell has sold out: ‘I could exist without IMC’ ‘If you get on our blacklist you’ll never work for anyone again. You’re up to your ears in debt, I checked.’ I liked the sudden appearance of Leeson’s brother, someone who in another story would just be another colonist and how suddenly Morgan turns from a obsequious toady to a moral coward, blaming Dent for the murder of the colonists when he is in danger himself. There’s a terrific moment where Mary Ashe comes alive in episode five, trying to convince Caldwell to help them which is beautifully played by Helen Worth. Ashe might have been fairly ineffectual as a leader but his sacrifice at the conclusion (especially given the fact that it has so little fanfare) proves that he was up to the job.
• Compared to some robots that we have faced in Doctor Who, the IMC one is one of the less florid and more believable examples. The end of episode one might seem comical in retrospect but Briant paces the scene well so it’s raised metallic claws and sudden appearance are a genuine threat. However once it has the giant organic claws added the effect is almost entirely lost and it is clear that the thing couldn’t hurt a fly.
• Winton as the killer in the camp comes with an atmosphere all of its own. I wish he hadn’t been outed quite as soon as he was as I really like the idea of the murderous IMC operative pretending to be a terrified colonists and twisting the knife in their backs.
• It might be a grimmer location but there really isn’t that much different between the gunplay in the muddy dunes in this and the lauded location work in the last episode of Caves of Androzani. I really appreciated the use of automatic weapons rather than some space age alternative. It gives the gunplay a sense of realism, as though the colonists are really fighting for their lives. The shoot outs that occur in this story, especially the one at the end of episode four where the situation breaks into all out warfare are actually extremely impressive. How dirty do Winton and the IMC get during their scrap in the last episode? It’s notable because it is much nastier and filthier than this show dared to be at the time.
• Do we ever really believe that the colonist are going to be blown up in their ship at the end? Not really, but it’s still a nice conceit and provides a climactic moment when it looks like they have all gone up in smoke.

The Bad:

• Wow, the TARDIS is filthy, even before they land on the chalky mire known as Exarius. Clearly the Doctor has been more interested in its inner workings than its external appearance. Future incarnations are much more fastidious in its presentation. It has been so long since the old girl has done it (materialised, I mean) that she pops into existence with dramatic abruptness rather than the usual fading nonchalance of the past.
• I rather like the drab aesthetic of this story because it does suggest a hardship and desperation that the colonist are facing but Jo discovering that hideous plastic flower that has apparently been growing amongst the chalky white mulch is just absurd. As soon as the location was chosen I would have excised this scene. The Doctor suggests the mining with turn the planet into a slag heap…it’s hardly a lush paradise as it stands!
• The primitives are the literal interpretation of that cursed Doctor Who cliché, the rubber monster. It is easy to detect all the joins in the costume and there is no natural movement or fluidity in any of it. It looks precisely what it is – a man struggling in a cumbersome costume.
• I’m quite the fan of Dudley Simpson’s electronic music in season eight (although I will accept that it can be hideously melodramatic and discordant at times) but Colony in Space easily features the worst score of the year. At times it feels as if Simpson has leant a little too hard on the knobs of his tuner and the result is a screaming wail that would outshine a cat on heat.
• The IMC ship is clearly a miniature and the way it is shot only serves to increase the feeling that it is a small scale model. The shot of the Adjudicators ship landing, wobbling precariously over the polystyrene miniature might just be the worst piece of model work in the show. And that is facing stiff competition from the Dalek saucer in Dalek Invasion of the Earth and the Cyberman paper plate ships in The Moonbase. When you think that the impressive Anderson-esque model work is due in Frontier in Space in less than two years  you have to wonder what went wrong here.
• Colony in Space is a story that isn’t exactly packed with surprises and when the story does attempt to astonish it has already signposted itself so obviously that it encourages little more than sighs from the audience. Norton is an IMC spy? Morgan is responsible for killing the colonists? Caldwell turns against his own people? All of these could be much bigger shocks if the script and direction hadn’t gone to great lengths to point them out before they are revealed. Even the appearance of the Master (as welcome as that is) is gutted by the fact that he has turned up in every story this season like a bad smell. It would be more of a surprise if he didn’t turn up to get involved.
• The story is progressing quite nicely in the first two episodes. It is slow, even for the period, but the story builds nicely and adds many convincing complications as you would imagine from a story written by Hulke and script edited by Dicks. It is during episode three when the tension between IMC and the colonists is unveiled where things start to get a bit tedious, around the time that Jo is kidnapped by the primitives. This would have made quite a tidy four parter, I think. At six episodes Malcolm Hulke has the time to make this story as exotic as possible, to add in the sequences in the primitive ruins. Perhaps if the design of the creatures that Jo discovers down there were creepier and more effective and the sets looked less like an 80s Santa’s grotto and more atmospheric then the cliffhanger of Jo walking through a rock in the wall would be more effective. As it stands these bizarre sequences are a testament to the limitations of Doctor Who in outer space, both financially and in storytelling terms. Perhaps the show was better off hanging around on Earth. Why is it with these ancient civilisations that the chronicles painted on the walls always look like something that a kid has knocked up for a school project (The Twin Dilemma suffers from the same aesthetic). The mute Elders wandering around look startlingly like my nan (you know, the one I don’t like), especially glammed up with the big collar and what is the deal with the puppet baby that emerges from the wall for a natter? I think that Letts/Dicks’ second attempt at a monster menagerie (Curse of Peladon) is much more successful. The end result of their visit to the primitive city is that it winds up being blown to pieces. That’s a bit grim, isn’t it?
• The Doctor and Jo crawling under the security beam in the Master’s TARDIS has to be seen to be believed.
• You have to wonder if there is a much more gripping story waiting to be told about a doomsday weapon, especially considering this story fails to mention it in the first five episodes and it is dropped rather casually into conversation between the Master and the Doctor. It feels as though the story should have built up to this revelation but instead it just feels like an excuse to allow the Master to get involved with the story. As good as the sequence where the Master offers the Doctor a share in his blackmail of the galaxy is, it feels as though it is a scene that has been removed from another, much more climactic story.

The Shallow Bit: With all those hideous moustaches on display and drab, comatose colours, Colony in Space might just be the most seventies story that the show ever presented, fashion wise.

Result: Cowboys and Indians in a quarry! I think that Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks had a good point about four episodes being the ideal length of a Doctor Who story…so it baffles me why they kept commissioning overlong six part stories! With the fat trimmed away Colony in Space would be a pretty decent little story; there is a solid dilemma at its heart, some strong characterisation and the idea of the Doctor and Jo exploring a new world is even more exciting than usual given he has been grounded for the past year and a half. With those two extra episodes however the story seems to go around in circles with the power baton constantly being passed between the colonists and IMC, the diversion into the primitive city proving a diversion into panto land and the tedious scenes of the Doctor and Jo in danger in the Master’s TARDIS. At four episodes this would be much tighter, pacier and excise a lot of it’s detracting elements. The twin narratives, the secrets of the primitive city and the fight for the planet run side by side but never dovetail at any point which makes me question why they were part of the same story. However I maintain that there are some very engaging elements in this story; the realistic plight of the colonists, the grim picture painted of life back on Earth, the performance of the IMC bullies that you can hiss and sneer at, the authentically functional design of the sets and the expected appearance of the Master which comes with all of Roger Delgado’s charm and charisma. I enjoy the early claustrophobia of the colonists under attack from within (Norton) and without (IMC) and the gunplay and fight sequences (especially the scrap in the clay) impress. It is the one story in season eight where Pertwee doesn’t strut about preening his ego and Manning seems to enjoy the chance to stretch Jo’s experiences on another world, although the temptation to turn her into a whimpering victim seems irresistible for the writer. Ultimately this story will never be considered one of the shows greatest successes but I refuse to place amongst its greatest failures either, it is a deeply flawed tale that needs pruning to highlight its many strengths (as it is they are hidden amongst much dross) and is perhaps a little too visually lifeless to keep your attention for its running time. What really stands out are the efforts of Pertwee, Manning, Delgado, Ringham, Pennell, Kay and Cautner. They are the ones that make you believe in this world: 6/10

The Sea Devils written by Malcolm Hulke and directed by Michael Briant

This story in a nutshell: After allying himself with the Axons and the Devil, the master is back in cahoots with another race that could determine the fate of humanity...

Good Grief: Even when you don’t entirely like the third Doctor you can’t deny that he has a lot of personality. I would rather watch Pertwee's Doctor  at his most arrogant and ungrateful than Davison when he is sidelined or McCoy when he attempts to emote (although I understand that that is a purely subjective viewpoint). Malcolm Hulke’s Silurian/Sea Devils stories see the Doctor at his most obstinate and arrogant but there is still a vein of humour here that keeps you on side. There is something about the way the Doctor treats Trenchard that makes the character seem so desperately inadequate - I'm pleased that he turns out to be in the Master's pocket because otherwise there would be no excuse for the way the Time Lord talks to him. We learn a little backstory about the Doctor and the Master, that they used to be good friends and went to school together and when he visits him in his cell there does seem to be a genuine amount of concern (although why that should be after his behaviour last season baffles me). It’s an intriguing relationship because the Master is the only other member of his race on the planet who can understand his plight in exile and yet he proves to be a corrupt meddler in the affairs of the planet when he is let off the leash. He’s happy to flash a bit of cash to get his own way. The sheer gravity of his statement that Horatio Nelson used to be a personal friend of the Doctor's is almost enough to allow him to get away with such an egotistical namedrop. I was getting flash forwards to Austin Powers' 'Judo chop!' when the Doctor dramatically cries 'Akidaa!' and  performs his signature Venusian karate. His little diatribe that violence will get you nowhere might have more of an impact if the Doctor wasn't kicking the crap out of people wherever he goes in this story. ‘You really think you can keep me here?’ he tells Trenchard, his confidence knowing no bounds. Pertwee ensures that every scene is packed with a little moment of character, his ‘how very kind of you…how very unkind of you!’ is wonderful. I was laughing my head off when the Doctor tells Jo to leave the explanations to him (he’s so sexist you almost imagine him adding ‘you dumb bint’ at the end of the sentence) and then scoffing down all her cheese sandwiches. Sarah Jane Smith would never have put up with that kind of behaviour, neither would Liz Shaw. At times you are barely on the Doctor's side he is behaving so brutishly and with the Master pouring on the charm it is sometimes easier to offer your sympathies to the villain. What saves the Doctor is his earnestness, attempting to forge a relationship between the Sea Devils and humanity with such gravity. Everything he does is for the good of humanity, even if he barely disguises his disgust for the species at times. There is a quiet moment of humility when he admits that he failed to save the Silurians before and you feel that this is a second chance for him to get it right. The Doctor gives the submarine Commander a Sea Devil gun suggesting he wont kill himself but he is happy for others to do it for him…then he gives him a hard time when he does! Hypocrisy thy name is Number Three. Every fibre of my being screams at me to dislike this guy at times and yet there is something in Pertwee's portrayal that never lets me do so. It is the strangest anomaly.

Dippy Agent: Katy Manning looks fabulous in her white suit and there is no sign of the dizzy blonde here, she’s a professional spy once again and responsible for beating up three guards and rescuing the Doctor twice. The last time we saw her this resourceful was The Mind of Evil and I although I find she matures beautifully in her last season I’m not sure she would ever be this practical again.  The chemistry between Manning and Pertwee is effortless at this point. I love her ‘that was my favourite DJ’ scene with him when they are trapped on the Fort together. She’s learnt the paralyzing ‘Judo Chop!’ technique, knocking out guards with a single blow. This is not the work of the Doctor, she has clearly she has been taking lessons from her old pal Tara King.

The Doctor’s Moriarty: Despite some efforts in the eighties to serialise the show (it doesn't work when your efforts consist of a one line reference to the previous story at the beginning of each new one) they never quite had the tools that the show did in the early seventies. This is not only a sequel to The Silurians but also to The Daemons, picking up the threads that climaxed at the end of season end when the Master was arrested. ‘You can consider yourself lucky. Quite a few people were in favour of having you executed’ says the Doctor in the story’s one moment of real life grit. Is the Master a changed man with a great deal to repent? It's an interesting angle to take with a villain and can only be dealt with at the moment whilst he is incarcerated. He has everything that he wants except his freedom. The iconic sequence where the Master watches The Clangers and pretends that he thinks they real is priceless and worth the admission price alone. We've seen him dressed as an Administrator and a Vicar and now it is time to tart the villain up as an Admiral and he looks every bit the naval officer, wandering around the base and saluting his subordinates. Whilst the fight between the Doctor and the Master feels a little comic strip (not helped by the gloriously insane moment when they speed the film up to give them the impression that they have super hero speed) but the idea of him pulling a knife and throwing at the Doctor's back feels genuinely dangerous. That sort of behaviour certainly wouldn't have been tolerated on the New Series. The Master plays Trenchard like a fine instrument, suave and confident and even manages to convince him that everything is fine when it has clearly gone to shit. Gloriously he doesn't even spare his ally a glance when the Sea Devils storm the prison and murder him, Trenchard was simply a means to an end. Finally the Master thinks he has found a species that hates humanity as much as he does and his smugness knows no bounds so it is especially satisfying when the Sea Devils put their faith in the Doctor instead. Whilst this prison bound diversion has been fun I was pleased to see the guy escape at the end, I don't think the idea of him constantly outwitting whoever is put in charge of locking him had the ability to run. His little wave as he departs in a hovercraft is perfect.

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘The point Mr Parliamentary Private Secretary is that you have not destroyed them. You have just made them angry. Very, very angry!’
‘You said man is weak!’ ‘So he is! Soon you can surge from the sea in your millions and exterminate them!’

The Good Stuff: If you can filter out Malcolm Hulke's ear splitting music then the first episode is a perfect exercise in suspense building without ever revealing the monster. Briant uses his cameras very carefully to suggest horrors unseen, often filming in near darkness to suggest something moving about within. With a copious amount of location work, some unusual action (the Doctor and Jo at sea), what feels like hundreds of extras and terrific technology on display (the cars with their doors removed, the diving bell, the submarine), The Sea Devils feels like a very expensive production. Clearly the aid of the Naval forces has given the show access to resources that would otherwise have felt lacking. Hulke is a fantastic character writer and his scripts always have a touch of realism about them - I especially like the sea fort workers drinking and gambling but Hart made quite an impression on me too, looking for all the world as though he is undergoing a nervous breakdown at points. The scenes of the Doctor and Jo investigating the sea fort are atmospherically handled, I don't think some of this material would be out place in a good chiller at the movies at the time. Some real thought has gone into the Sea Devil design, somebody has sat down and really thought through what an underwater species would look like and struck upon an inspired turtle motif. I really like their guns too, something unlike anything we have seen before. Michael Briant goes all Batman on us, offering tilted angles and overly dramatic music as the Doctor pursues the Sea Devil through the fort. There is a real atmosphere to the sequences set on the submarine, I always love it when Doctor Who heads beneath the waves and the model work (which bests that seen in Cold War in my opinion) and sets are dazzlingly realised to ensure this looks as real as possible. The submarine descends to the seabed, clanging noises resound from the hull, screams pour from the intercom and the door starts to melt away...who said the middle episodes of these six parters sag? This is vintage stuff and I can imagine kids biting their nails as the Sea Devils emerge. The era is famed for it's superb cliffhangers (Drashigs, Maggots and Dinos, oh my!) and I detect the hand of Terrance Dicks at work when the Doctor and Jo are caught between a minefield, a squadron of armed guards and a Sea Devil emerging from the shore! It would seem that we are to be denied any material from the 60s set on a beach (The Smugglers, The Underwater Menace, Enemy of the World and Fury from the Deep all absent from the archives) so it is great to finally get out in the sea air and enjoy some coastline action. The shots of the Sea Devils emerging from the waves are justly famous, Doctor Who once against proving that you don't need a huge budget to create moments of television that last. Captain Hart is a very believable character, Edwin Richfield gives a marvelously irritable and tired performance and he is unwilling to take the Doctor’s absurd suggestions at face value. Trenchard's off screen death is his final indignity, he's one of Doctor Who's most interesting bad guys because he thought he was behaving inappropriately for all the right reasons. Your sympathies are with him because he is clearly not up to his job and yet at the same time his heart is in the right place. I really enjoy the cliffhanger to episode four even if the build up does seem to take forever. In true dramatic form, the Doctor manages to form a bond with the Sea Devil leader just as Walker orders the ships to attack them. The Sub in the underground harbour – Gerry Anderson eat your heart out! The last episode is one of those Pertwee installments that impresses you with a whirlwind of violence and great set pieces; Sea Devils die in the most spectacular way on the beach as hovercrafts full of naval officers emerge and massacre them and the whole thing climaxes in an impressive speedboat chase between the Doctor and the Master. This is high octane Who, playing to a cinema audience and it flies by in entertaining fashion.

The Bad Stuff: This story is responsible for many, many years of ridicule by my Uncle who just happened to be babysitting one day when this was repeated on BBC2 and he saw the cliffhanger featuring the Sea Devils emerging from the sea. Every time the show was mentioned during family gatherings throughout my childhood he would always go on about the Sea Devils (or 'the monsters where the eyes don't move' to be precise) to the point where it has become a regular joke (I even bought him a T-shirt with a Sea Devil on it for his 60th). Everybody has that moment when somebody in their family spoils Doctor Who for them, pointing out its absurdities previously unnoticed by the seasoned fan and The Sea Devils is mine. The discordant Malcolm Clarke music veers between atmospheric (not very often) and ear bleedingly dreadful and distracting (about 80% of the time). One of the sea fort workers coins the term Sea Devil and yet in true Doctor Who form from here on this seems to be their official name (see also The Ice Warriors and the Silurians). I abhor plots that hinge on co-incidence and Jo peering out of the window and just happening to spot the Master certainly qualifies. The padding creeps in during episode two with the Doctor and Jo heading back and forth to the prison to check that the Master really is behind bares. Barry Letts is right, the swordfight is stagy and it feels too rehearsed and the music distracts. Jo creeping around the castle is accompanied by something that sounds awfully like high-pitched wet farts. With its grainy location work and penchant for browns, greens and greys, The Sea Devils is a pretty ugly story to look at at times. When the Sea Devils leave the ocean en masse the picture quality is horrendous, it's so dark and grainy it looks like they are walking out of black ink. A lesson in over reaction – watch the two guards who walk around the corner in the prison and bump into a Sea Devil! The action slams to a halt for five minutes as the diving bell is plunged beneath the waves and then brought up again with laborious detail. Walker is another one of those characters that turns up simply to get in the way cause further complication to the plot. To give him some credit he is much better written and performed than Chinn in The Claws of Axos (he felt as though he just stepped from an overblown comic) but in his own way his character is just as vacuous. Doctor Who really doesn't have any very positive to say about official types in the early seventies, does it? Walker is very confident when scoffing down rough cut marmalade on toast but becomes a gibbering idiot when he is put in danger (and his Hitler mustache impression when he is confronted with a Sea Devil has to be seen to be believed). After a story that has impressed with it's authentic sets it is a shame to head down into the Sea Devil base with its cheap black drapes and polystyrene rocks. Once all the incredible set pieces are out of the way the only place this story can go is to blow up the Sea Devils because the series isn’t brave enough to explore an ongoing story of rehabilitating the creatures into society. It would have been brave decision to have made when the Doctor met the Silurians (there was certainly the time in seasons seven and eight to explore the idea, the Doctor almost exclusively on the Earth during that period) but considering he is going to be given his freedom in three stories time I can understand why this might not have been the best time.

The Shallow Bit: I hadn't realised that the submarine Commander was Donald Sumpter! He was quite a hottie in his youth!

Result: I have been far too hard on this story in the past. I had always written it off as an ugly looking, tuneless repeat of the Silurians with about half it's intelligence and lacking its decent characterisation. Whilst some of those criticisms do hold water I can feel a counter argument brewing in my mind even as I type those words. Yes the story is drenched in miserable colours and the location work does look grainy and dour but the direction in general is of an extremely high quality and the action is covered dynamically throughout. Yes the music is extremely experimental but at least the show was trying something different and occasionally Malcolm Clarke manages to strike upon something genuinely spooky and atmospheric (the submarine scenes are very well scored). And yes the character work may not match Doctor Who & the Silurians for shades of grey but Malcolm Hulke is too strong a writer to let even the smallest of characters slip by without some colour and conviction. Like all six parters it is stuffed full of padding but as a complete story it holds together far better than I have ever given it credit for, aided by the high action content which adds a war movie credibility to the piece. We can thank the Royal Navy for that, ensuring that when Walker orders a strike against the Sea Devils it genuinely looks like they have the facilities to blow them off the planet. Michael Briant's direction is excellent and he ensures the pace rarely lets up, filling the story with exciting set pieces (and some nicely handled scares) and I can understand why Barry Letts kept turning to the youthful and risk taking director. The Doctor and the Master dance around each other, revelling in their rivalry and yet always on the verge of polishing each other off. It would be fair to say that in stories of this type that Roger Delgado's Master is every bit the central character as the Pertwee's Doctor and during parts of The Sea Devils you might even find yourself siding with the villain such is his mesmeric influence. On its own strenghts I would probably give this story a 7 but this has been one of my biggest surprises since I ran this higgeldy piggledy marathon and I felt a tingle of excitement that you get when discovering a great Doctor Who story throughout which bumps it up to a: 8/10

Prisoners of Fate written by Jonathan Morris and directed by Ken Bentley

What’s it about: Twenty-five years ago, with Richter's Syndrome running rampant throughout the galaxy, the brilliant biochemist Nyssa, formerly of Traken, bade a painful farewell to her young family... and set off into the space, in search of a cure for this deadly disease. She never returned. Now, her grown-up son continues her work on the penal colony of Valderon, still desperate to make the breakthrough that eluded his presumed-dead mother. So when the TARDIS lands on Valderon, bringing the Doctor, Tegan, Turlough and Nyssa to its fortress prison, the scene is set for a painful reunion... but not only for Nyssa. The Doctor's past is about to catch up with him too...

An English Gentleman: Not in possession of all the facts, the Doctor agrees to take Nyssa away from Valderon but doesn’t realise the full dangers of the presence of her son. He describes the old Type 50 as an old acquaintance from his youth. When time is royally cocked up the Doctor has proof of why he is always so keen to holds its hand (as Tegan so uniquely puts it). He discovers that Nyssa had a whole life waiting for her that he never knew about. If he had known he would never have allowed her to travel with him for so long.

Alien Orphan (the Older): Thank goodness somebody has started paying attention to Nyssa again, After being practically irrelevant in both Eldrad and Mercia I was starting to wonder after all the good work Big Finish have done with her solo with the fifth Doctor that she was going the same way as her fate on TV series, shunted to the sidelines and left to fester. I’m all for variety in the range and would love to see another fifth Doctor and Nyssa trilogy without Tegan and Turlough hogging the limelight quite so dramatically. It’s the curse of the three companion format, somebody always gets left behind (the only story that I can think of featuring this trio of companions that managed to give them an equal share of the limelight is The Emerald Tiger…it is no co-incidence that it is also the best story of their run by some considerable margin). I was wondering if we would ever catch up with Nyssa’s alleged children that have been mentioned in several stories and finally the producers feel that the time has come to further explore her background after she left the Doctor.

When Adric (her son, understandable choice of name, even it is rather cringy) was a little boy, Nyssa used to tell him stories of her adventures with the Doctor. Because Nyssa was made to look younger again her son assumes that this Nyssa is from a point before he was born. He wears a masks when talking to his mother, pretending to have had an accident, so to protect his identity but the truth is she might not even recognise him even if he had greeted her as his son. Nyssa is devastated to learn that she never made it home to her family, that they suffered a gaping void from her absence. The reunion with her son 25 years after she last saw him is beautifully played by both actors, sensitive and poignant. She learns that her husband died alone and heartbroken while she has been off adventuring with the Doctor. Perhaps she should have asked to have been taken home immediately. Travelling with the Doctor, things tend to get in the way. Nyssa always has had her head screwed on properly and she doesn’t blame the Doctor for not taking her home as soon as she had the opportunity. She takes responsibility for her own actions. Saying that she does want to know why the decision to meet her son was almost taken out of her hands in this situation. She as lost so many people that are dear to her and she doesn’t understand how the Doctor thought that knowing she never returned home would be too much to bear. She can see how Adric has grown into a remarkable man and wishes she hadn’t missed so much of it. She knows her responsibilities to time but when the Type 50 gives her the chance to break free of its rules and step back in her life it is very tempting, to undo all her mistakes. If she has a choice she wont allow her children to grow up without a mother. The truth is that Adric became a better person because Nyssa wasn’t around, trying to live up to her memory. If she does walk back into her old life she will undo all of that and he could turn out a monster (lets be honest if you had do-gooder Nyssa expecting you to follow in your footsteps you would probably want to break out of that mould quite dramatically). The Doctor asks her to do the hardest thing she has ever faced – to abandon her husband and children. What an impossible choice.

Mouth on Legs: Apparently the product of an ancient civilisation giving Turlough the opportunity to suggest that she is something of a genetic throwback (hehehe). She promised to keep Nyssa’s secret and she is the sort of person who lives up to those promises.

Alien Orphan (the Younger): Turlough is frustrated because he is always kept in the dark about what is really going on because he thinks that the Doctor doesn’t trust him. As soon as he is apprised of the situation he blunders, telling Adric that the Nyssa who has visited Valderon is post-his birth! You can always rely on Turlough to look on the bright side – not!

Standout Performance: Rather than bringing in new actors to play the role of the Type 50 TARDIS, Morris strikes upon the clever idea of using Tegan and Turlough as the mouthpieces of the machine. It enables Janet Fielding and Mark Strickson to give very different kinds of performances, ethereal and emotionless and the effect is quite spellbinding. Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton attempt to get away with cod Scottish accents but don’t quite succeed.

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Isn’t it obvious? Your machine only shows you what it wants you to see…’

‘This gadget of yours might be handy for a weather forecast but you can’t use it as a basis for a judicial system!’

‘It should have been me! Not this antiquated relic!’

‘You just ate my dematerialisation circuit!’

‘You’re saying we’re all about to get Blinovitched!’

‘You’re nothing more than a castle built on broken dreams.’

Great Ideas: Morris loves the idea of the Doctor and friends being expected when they apparently show up randomly in stories, both Festival of Death and Cobwebs explored the same idea. The Chronoscope allows them to see into the future, to see events of significance that are to come. It has brought peace and prosperity to the world since accidents are now preventable, illness is a thing of the past and all forms of crime are antiquated. Would be perpetrators are stopped before their crimes have even been committed. Technically innocent people are sent to prison as a reminder to obey the law and not question those in charge. It’s both fair and criminally unjust. Morally paradoxical. You can see the merits of such a system although I cannot imagine living on a world where spontaneity and autonomy has died a quick death. We witness a man being sentenced for murdering somebody before the idea has even come to him and so naturally he protests his innocence. It proves to be a self perpetuating system because the very act of being arrested and accused of a crime is what gives him the idea in the first place! The reason the Chronoscope has predicted the TARDISes arrival could be because it was responsible for bringing them to Valderon. Because he thinks that Nyssa is the younger version who travelled with the Doctor before she left him and fell pregnant with him, Adric spells out Nyssa’s fate to Tegan all the way up to her abandonment on Helheim (featured in Cobwebs) and tries to avert that future for her. After Nyssa went missing in 3530 she never returned to her own time (because Adric is still looking for her in this period) which means the Doctor never managed to take her back home and knowing this means now he never will. It also means that all the people that have died between 3530 and now of Richters Disease have done so pointlessly since she could have returned home with the cure…which she now can’t because this is a set point in time! A massacre caused by a temporal nightmare! I haven’t been this involved in the mechanics of a story since January’s The Wrong Doctors. The trouble is nobody is telling anybody the truth which causes all kinds of problems; Tegan wont betray Nyssa’s confidence and tell the Doctor about Adric, Nyssa has no idea that her grown up son is so close, Turlough doesn’t realise that the truth about Nyssa’s post-Helheim timeline should be kept a secret…and as a result everything spills out into the open with dramatic consequences. Obviously Adric doesn’t quite understand the theory behind temporal mechanics…by telling his mother that she never came home he is ensuring that those events never take place. If only he had kept his gob shut then there was always the possibility that she would return home, blissfully ignorant of this future and delete this timeline. After Nyssa went missing her family left Zarat and never stayed anywhere for more than a few months, her husband buried himself in his work and Adric enrolled in college and got a first class degree in xeno-medicene. He wanted to help people and honour her memory. Nyssa’s daughter became an aid worker but eventually became infected with Richters disease. Volunteers are plentiful on a penal world and that’s why Adric came to Valderon, to further his work on a cure for the disease. The Chronoscope predicted that he would find a cure, which Nyssa now firmly believes is the one that she holds in her possession, their reunion foretold. It was inevitable as soon as we learnt the truth about the Chronoscope that one of the Doctor’s friends would be framed by the device and it gives a nice excuse to tuck Tegan and Turlough out of the way while the Doctor and Nyssa deal with the emotional ramifications of the events of the first episode. Sibor permitted Adric to come to Valderon because she wanted something to use as leverage against the Empire, holding them to ransom unless they recognise her as the new Prime Elector or she will withhold the cure for Richters. There are any number of time sensitive races across the universe that could be able to see into the future (Tharils, Jagaroth, Xeraphin, The Times Lords). When the Miracle occurred everybody on Valderon woke up and realised they could speak every language in the known universe as though it was their own…that is a massive clue as to the identity of the villain of the piece before it is revealed. As soon as a TARDIS with a functioning chameleon circuit was introduced I suspected there would be a scene where it morphed into the identity of one of the Doctor’s friends. It’s still a great moment when it comes. Nyssa makes the comparison with the Melkur, a walking, talking TARDIS. As a result of Nyssa’s decision to return home history is being split into two, one where she never came home and one where she did and cured Richters syndrome. You can just imagine the visual of two different versions of the same planet overlapping on each other. Reconstructing a planet as one vast TARDIS – you could never accuse Morris of limiting his imagination! There have been plenty of Doctor Who stories short of a good idea, Prisoners of Fate has enough to power an entire season. If Alan Barnes knew all along that this story would take place and Nyssa would need to step back in time into her old life just before she left, is that why they made her younger in The Emerald Tiger? Getting her ready for the twist events in this story? Or did it work the other way around? They wanted to use publicity shots of a younger Nyssa on the covers and Jonny Morris exploited the idea of Nyssa being younger so she could step back into her life…oh my word I’ve gone boss eyed with confusion. During Circular Time when Nyssa was caught in a dreamscape created by the Doctor during his regeneration she told him about her son Adric and he didn’t know about him. But by telling him about Adric earlier in his life she has created a paradox that is still fuelling the Type 50. It’s a pretty obscure twist considering it takes in the events of a one part story that was released years ago but it is still well explained and logical. As a result the Doctor’s future incarnations could be wiped from the future.

Audio Landscape: Rain lashing, static, bubbling experiments, church bells, electrics. I kind of lost track of the atmospherics because I was so absorbed with the story.

Isn’t it Odd: I really don’t like it when writers take massive liberties with characters and suggest that massive acres of their lives have passed without us having experienced any of that time with them. Nyssa spending 25 years alone growing bitter in order to reach Valderon after abandoning her children doesn’t ring true somehow, it feels more like a plot expediency rather than something that has actually happened. Perhaps if we could have witnessed a montage of scenes showing her life over the past quarter of a century it would have felt more believable but instead having her show up and go ‘phew it’s taken me 25 years to get here and now I’m proper pissed off!’ doesn’t quite ring true. In fact, it has more than a ring of The Curse of Fatal Death about it with the Master constantly tripping down that sewer and then turning up years/seconds later. She wants the Doctor to take her back to 3531 and pick her up so the past 25 years never happened. Considering the whole thing feels so contrived I am pleased that that is what took place. Although paradoxically it makes the whole thing feel even more contrived as a result, making this a real blink and you’ll miss it (or shoulder shrugging if you were feeling cynical) period of development for Nyssa. Just as I said in my review of Buffy’s Selfless the other day regarding Anya, this feels like a perfect stepping off point for Nyssa and it feels as if that is where the story is going. But because Big Finish are reluctant to stop working with Sarah Sutton and the character the big development promised in Prisoners of Fate is…that everything stays exactly the same. Hmm. After her protestations about abandoning her children, surely Nyssa would leave with her son at the end?

Standout Scene: Morris has fun suggesting that there might be a Time Lord at the heart of the Chronoscope and given his prolific amount of appearances during the Davison era I was wondering if there was going to be a surprise reveal of the Master. The actual twist is far more interesting than that. The Chronoscope is a Type 50 TARDIS, the one the Doctor originally chose before the TARDIS he ended up with chose him. By ingenious co-incidence this ties in perfectly with The Name of the Doctor where we witnessed the first Doctor heading towards one capsule before Clara stepped in and suggested another. His original TARDIS feels spurned, that he took another in his place. I can remember having something of an allergic reaction to the way Gary Russell and Alan Barnes portrayed the Doctor’s TARDIS in Zagreus as a spiteful and vicious old queen that was furious with how the Doctor mistreated him. It felt like a perversion of the one constant in the Doctor’s life. In comparison this beautifully done, for a start the characterisation a world away from anything Russell could achieve but there is also a damn good reason for this TARDIS to feel so hard done by. If it wasn’t for a quirk of fate it could have roamed the universe with the Doctor for the past 600 odd years, taking in the most incredible sights and adventures. There is sufficient cause to feel as if it had been abandoned. The idea of the machine abusing itself and tearing through the Time Lord defences so it could escape Gallifrey and come after the Doctor is both terrifying and heartbreaking and shows what lengths it is willing to go to in order to seek revenge. It crash landed on Valderon 20 years ago, crippled, broken and alone. Now it wants to be reborn and experience the life it should have had. It’s dramatic, satisfying and uses the shows continuity to its own advantage. Some might say it is wanky but it’s a flea biting compared to what was revealed in The Name of the Doctor.

Result: After the slack and uninteresting Eldrad Must Die! and the slightly bland Lady of Mercia, the Main Range really needed to strike out with something special to regain its chutzpah in the 50^th anniversary year. Fortunately the ever reliable Jonathan Morris is on hand to give the range a shot of adrenalin and he has crafted one of his finest scripts, easily matching his work on last years Protect and Survive and then some. Whilst I always find his work of a high standard, Morris tends to buck the trend of most writers by doing his best work in the Main Range whereas pretty much every other current writer scores their wins in the spin off series’ (the Companion Chronicles, Jago & Litefoot and The Lost Stories especially). I remember Mark Gatiss recalling on the Earthshock DVD range that his younger self had the feeling that ‘something different is going on here…’ when he watched Logopolis and Earthshock and that was precisely the feeling I had with Prisoners of Fate, that tingle of excitement as things complicate and evolve with a crushing sense of doom and a feeling that perhaps this time things might not work out in the way they usually do. My one disappointment was that the story seems to be promising big developments but the net result is that everything resets at the end to precisely how things were at the beginning. Classic Who was often plot heavy and Morris in particular has always been able to construct a abundant narrative and with Prisoners of Fate he blends some very strong ideas (the Chronoscope and it’s predictive power, Nyssa’s temporal nightmare, an old friend of the Doctor’s returning to haunt him) with excellent character work to produce something truly surprising and captivating throughout. Once again Morris out Moffat’s Moffat by creating a timey wimey puzzle to unravel with an emotional sting that will stick in your memory for some time – the decision that Nyssa makes in episode four is heartbreakingly difficult – but the net result is agreeably tied up in a satisfying fashion rather than leaving a million questions, threads and moments of illogic unresolved such is the method of the series’ current show runner. It’s a story that manages to feel as though it has spiralled out of the characters control whilst at the same time feeling precisely crafted and Ken Bentley ensures that the mass of information is conveyed in an engaging and dramatic fashion. Sarah Sutton grabs hold of the opportunity to take centre stage and shares some excellent moments with Peter Davison whilst the rest of the regulars are afforded the chance to play a very different role in these events. Easily on par with The Wrong Doctors without quite toppling it (that story lost its way in the middle but scored a massive high with its ending, the opposite of Prisoners of Fate), this is still a terrific achievement and another top dollar tale from a writer whose imagination clearly has no limits: 9/10

Council of War written by Simon Barnard & Paul Morris and directed by Lisa Bowerman

What’s it about: At the Doctor's request, Sergeant Benton is investigating ghosts and missing people in Kettering, while undercover as a local councillor. And that's how he comes to meet Margery Phipps. An alien incursion in the town hall leads them on a journey to a terrible future – where Margery discovers how she changed a world, and the life of a whole civilisation hangs in the balance…

The Sarge: Good old Sergeant Benton. You wont really find anyone who has a bad word to say about him. Then again you probably wont find anybody who gets giddily excited about him either. He was a firm favourite during the Pertwee era, a lovable officer who was fiercely loyal to all the other members of UNIT and would occasionally be chewed out by the Brigadier for his incompetence (or perceived incompetence) during the course of his duties. It would appear that John Levene was almost universally loved by all those who worked with him, a shy man who brought a great deal of devotion to a small part that was developed because of it. When I saw that a companion chronicle was going to be devoted to the character my first reaction was that it would be interesting, my second reaction was how Levene would narrate given his incomprehensibly fast exposition on the DVD commentaries and my third was that it was nice to see a little variety in the series so near to the end. His slot has been reserved for the fag end of the season, the point where nobody expects great things and so if it goes horribly wrong it can be left there to fester whilst the rest of the (generally fantastic) season can remain untarnished… Fortunately the result is nothing of the kind and Levene proves to be the sort of magnetic performer that brings out the best in the companion chronicles. The very fact that we know so little about Benton and rarely get this close to him is one of the main reasons that this (ever so slight if I’m honest) tale works so well. 

A gentleman, tall and honourable, he is introduced rescuing an innocent party goer as Santa tries to feel her up. This job is more Mike Yates’ sort of thing but after all the business in Wales with the giant maggots and evil computer he had been forced to take some leave. Undercover work was fine as long as he didn’t have to act and when walking into a situation with a cover story he suffered from terrible stage fright (could this be a not-so-subtle description of Levene himself?). Fighting Axons and Cybermen was nothing compared to make polite conversation in civic functions. Fit and rather handsome in a mail order catalogue sort of way (I can’t argue with that, Levene is looking pretty hot splashed all over the Bond themed cover). Clearly Benton has been enjoying his dance classes with his sister, he is described as holding himself like a Spanish matador, tall and erect (oo-er missus). Benton enjoys a lovely chemistry with Margery Phipps, he’s such a straight character (in every sense of the word) that you only have to pair him up with some kind of radical (in The Daemons it was a white witch and here it is a radical feminist) and the culture clash does all the work for you (‘don’t call me Miss!’). If you rumbled undercover then UNIT reaction training is to say nothing and deny everything even in the face of torture. One night’s sky with three moons, you didn’t have to be the Doctor to realise you were standing on the surface of an alien planet. With his army experience and tactics and Margery’s gumption and political knowledge, they make a startlingly effective team and whip the people of Kettering into shape. He is really quite sympathetic for a professional soldier and is willing to do anything to save a race of people that he doesn’t even know, even at the cost of his own life.

Good Grief: Benton can tell that the Doctor is taking Jo’s departure hard. During the day he was his usual jubilant self but in the evenings he could be seen in his laboratory alone, just staring, alone. When the Doctor does eventually turn up on Kettering even he has to admit (and it must have taken a fair amount of effort to swallow down his monstrous ego in this incarnation) that Benton has everything under control.

Standout Performance: What a shame that there will only be twelve more companion chronicles after this and that they didn’t set upon the idea of using John Levene before because he has proven to be quite an enjoyable narrator. I certainly hope they utilise his talents when it comes to the third tales in the Early Years range. He, Katy Manning and Richard Franklin would bring a story to life with some gumption.

Great Ideas: Beryl Umbridge was the name of the woman who had gone missing, the red pin in the middle of the ghost sightings. The Doctor thinks that one of the apparitions has kidnapped her, spirited her away through time and space. Benton makes a fair rationalization of why UNIT believes the spirits to be time travellers misinterpreted as ghosts – perhaps he would have worked out as the Doctor’s assistant after all. Abducted, Benton and Margery find themselves dragged to a fake kangaroo court in the Council of Kettering, where she is accused of inciting seditious material. Escaping, they escape into the streets of Kettering but there is something wrong with the picture, covered in a deathly grey dust with no activity to break the eerie silence. Suddenly Kettering is by the sea and there is a giant arm stretching out from the sand. Margery facing up to a giant edifice of herself is gorgeous steal from Planet of the Apes and at this stage the story feels as though it has gone so far off tangent that anything could happen next. Valadar was once an unhappy planets whose inhabitants fought a century long war that almost destroyed them. Wanting to start afresh, the survivors looked to the past for inspiration and alighted upon a figure from the planet Earth. A woman named Margery Phipps who went on to become Prime Minister and went on to broke a lasting peace for many generations. She wrote a book which was still a bestseller 500 years later and it was this tome that was used as the foundational text for the revised planet. Valadar became the planet Kettering, thus named in her honour. The planet became famed for its abhorrence of violence, allowing them to enjoy a long period of peace but also undefended when a race of strip miners attacked and found no opposition. Much of the planets population was sold into slavery and its resources were plundered. Because they built their planet so accurately in the shape of Kettering it contained a military museum that they had no idea about housing 300 years worth of weapons that could be exploited to rise up against their oppressors. With the inclusion of a race of giant insects (in this case, cockroaches), this love letter to the Pertwee era is complete.

Audio Landscape: A relaxed party atmosphere, clinking glasses, pleasant conversation and great music, the Doctor’s time detector makes a wonderfully seventies racket, the lights snapping out, the electronic voices of the apparitions, alarms, clicking cockroach limbs.

Musical Cues: What an awesome score! It feels as though it has been pulled straight from the era that it is set in and had me grooving away whilst I was trying to concentrate on the story and dialogue. 

Result: Makes you wonder if the UNIT officers were always off having their own adventures whilst we were distracted by the Doctor’s antics, doesn’t it? I’m not sure that world is ready for The Sergeant Benton Adventures but as a one-off this is a glorious piece of seventies nostalgia, read charismatically by John Levene. The way it slips from the cosily familiar (the quintessential Britishness of the Kettering council chamber) to the blatantly absurd (an alien planet influenced by the work of Margery Phipps) feels like pure Doctor Who. Whilst the concepts might even have been rejected by Douglas Adams for being too ridiculous there is an essential seriousness running through the whole story (brought by straight laced John Benton mostly) that lets it hold together with some dignity. It’s a story that dares to ape the marvellous twist ending of Planet of the Apes, rip the piss out of Churchill’s famous wartime speech and even poke fun at some the clichés of the Pertwee era (‘I reversed the vibracity of the molecule flow!’) but coming from the writers of the Scarifyers I am not surprised that the script is injected with a high degree of cheek and brio. It’s bonkers and great fun but perhaps a little to absurd to truly stands out as anything other than a silly diversion. What really impressed me were the efforts of Levene and Sinead Keenan who share a delightful chemistry as Benton and Phipps and who get to have their own little adventure off world and get back in time for tea. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this release (which is a nice feeling) and I was pleasantly surprised at the amiable results: 7/10

The Dalek Contract written and directed by Nick Briggs

What’s it about: ‘These creatures have ravaged half the cosmos. They're experts at this kind of thing. Nothing can stand in their way.' The Doctor and Romana find themselves in the Proxima System, where enigmatic Conglomerate CEO Cuthbert has been conducting his infamous 'experiment'. An experiment which might accidentally rip the universe apart. Meanwhile, living conditions on Proxima Major have become harsh and hostile. Climate change has turned the landscape into a freezing wasteland and an alien power has condemned much of the population to life inside internment camps. For those still clinging to their freedom, the struggle for survival is now beyond desperate and outsiders such as the Doctor and Romana are only seen as a threat. What is Cuthbert really up to in the Proxima System, and just how does he expect the dreaded Daleks to fit into his plan?

Teeth and Curls: The Doctor has always enjoyed taking a healthy disrespect for powerful people which Romana interprets as him enjoying taking appalling risks, especially when it comes to bypassing the Randomiser and risking detection by the Black Guardian. Perhaps their old nemesis has been tracking them all along, ever since they left Atrios/Zeos/the Shadow Planet or perhaps it was the Doctor’s inattentive behaviour that allowed him to catch their scent and eventually set up his trap in Mawdryn Undead. I’m more inclined to believe the latter, the Doctor really was irresponsible (in the most brilliant, unexpected of ways) during this period of his life. What is uncharacteristic of the time is for the Doctor to follow up dangling threads from a previous adventure. He was always ready to move onto the next adventure so the events of their previous encounter with Cuthbert in the Proxima system must have concerned him enough to warrant this further exploration. His TARDIS is practically custom built these days. When facing a man with a gun the Doctor finds it easier to just smile and wave and act as if everything is normal. He’s spent more time that he cares to remember defeating the Daleks, something of a thorn in their side. When a damaged Dalek cannot shoot straight the Doctor amusingly asks if he is trying to miss him deliberately. The Doctor offers hope to those who have lost hope in the face of the Daleks, a man who has beaten them time and again. Even when things seem impossible the Doctor isn’t willing to give up hope. Brilliantly, the Doctor is accused of acts of terrorism against the Daleks.

Posh Girl: It seems that Romana is far more on the ball than the Doctor, after their near collision with a missile during The Armageddon Factor she repaired and improved the TARDIS defences. Naturally she is appalled to learn that the Doctor has cancelled out what he terms ‘tampering’ with his TARDIS, despite her superior knowledge of veteran and vintage time capsules. During one tense moment Romana panics because she thinks she is going to forced to kneel in snow and be shot dead on some grubby little planet in the middle of nowhere. Hardly an noble end for a Time Lady of her stature. She’s still offering out psychological evaluations at precisely the wrong time, you would have thought she would have dropped the habit during the course of their adventures. Under Dalek truth detection Romana admits that she and the Doctor don’t really get on and she expects to be flung back to Gallifrey at the earliest opportunity. Even in the face of Dalek firepower, Romana doesn’t lose her ability to sound like she is condescending to talk to people.

Standout Performance: It’s not often you get to re-experience the chemistry between a returning bad guy and their lackey but that is exactly what we enjoy here with both Cuthbert (the ever entertaining David Warner) and Mr Dorrick (Toby Hadoke). They enjoy a sparky, nervous chemistry that springs from the fact that Dorrick is petrified of his boss and every time he has bring him news he sounds as though he is going to be flogged for the effort. You need a strong actor to be able to hold his own against the Daleks (in villainous terms only Kevin Stoney and Roger Delgado have managed to upstage them) and David Warner can join this select bunch, treating the creatures as little more than muscle for hire.

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Daleks are not concerned with popularity!’

Great Ideas: If Cuthbert’s experiments are powerful enough to rip a hole in the fabric of space/time then he is more than worth a follow up visit to see just methods he was using and to stop him doing anything so hazardous again. Because they have been used ad nauseum in the series (and in the audio series), you have to try and do something a bit different with the Daleks to justify their inclusion (just having them there because they sell well is not a good enough excuse) and scenes of them melting their way through an avalanche certainly qualify. It’s the sort of ambitious set piece that I would love to see realised on screen. Also for the chance to hear K.9 blasting at Daleks is worth the admission price alone. Daleks for hire? Now that has never been attempted before for the very good reason that the idea is chilling. What could Cuthbert possibly offer them? Only a meglomaniacal fool (of Mavic Chen proportions) could possibly think they would have anything that the Daleks desire enough to turn them into thugs for hire (or a pacification force as Cuthbert describes them). Proxima Major has found itself wrenched out of its natural orbit thanks to Cuthbert’s unnatural experiments. The cliffhanging surprise is that the Daleks don’t kill, but arrest. Dalek plans are usually so gargantuan and diabolical that they are bound to vulnerable in some way. When he needed a discreet and efficient security force, Cuthbert’s agents made enquiries throughout the galaxy and the Daleks offered their services…but what are they really up to?

Audio Landscape: One thing I have noticed in the second season of 4DAs is how Big Finish have attempted to capture that feeling that the TARDIS can land anywhere and really capture the excitement in the versatile locations that the series can exploit. From the screaming birdsong and sunny glades of The Auntie Matter to the desert regions that drew the Laan in The Sands of Life to the foggy cobbled lanes of The Justice of Jalxar to the claustrophobic underwater depths of Phantoms of the Deep, we have been on a whirlwind tour of some memorable and fully realised locations. Whilst there have been plenty of Big Finish stories set amongst snowy wastes, The Dalek Contract utilizes the atmosphere of such an environment very quickly giving this story an stimulating you-are-there feel. Scanner screen, spaceship screaming past, the TARDIS proximity alarm, scanner, missiles approaching and exploding, wind swept planet, crunching through snow, an explosion that creates an avalanche, bullets bouncing off Dalek casings, a Dalek army all screaming at once, extermination blasts, a Dalek with a speech impediment, banging, Dalek doors, an engine choking to life.

Musical Cues: I really miss regular scores from Alistair Lock, who was one of the most prominent musicians when Big Finish first kick started the main range. He clearly understands the era of Doctor Who that this story is set in, opening with a dramatic Dudley Simpson-esque theme that sounds like a riff on the music from Genesis of the Daleks when the Daleks were on the move. I loved the jolly jingle when K.9 departed the TARDIS to save the Doctor and Romana from the Daleks, sounding for all the world like it has jumped from season sixteen.

Result: Big Finish have tapped into something far more engaging with their second season of 4DAs whilst not aspiring to the heights of true greatness that the main range can hit when at it’s best. Nick Briggs remains heavily involved (because, I suspect, Tom Baker feels more comfortable being involved that way) and his habitual, meat-and-potatoes approach to Doctor Who once again proves to be diverting enough but is still several notches down from his finest work (Creatures of Beauty, Dalek Empire). Mary Tamm’s Doctor Who experience in season sixteen was an atypical one; a series of linked adventures that indulging in science fantasy far more than science fiction that took Romana on an enchanting tour of some of the more imaginative locations in the universe on the hunt for the Key to Time. Without demeaning this year of audio adventures in any way, they have provided the character with a far more traditional season of adventures to compliment that. From historical comedy to space opera, from nostalgic fantasy to base under siege, it has encapsulated Doctor Who in it’s entirety and given Tamm’s interpretation of the character plenty more variety and scope. The Dalek Contract gives her (and K.9) the chance to butt heads with the Daleks and the unique idea at the heart of this tale is that this squadron are apparently hired assassins, under the thumb of Cuthbert (once again played with brio by David Warner). Neither cliffhanger feels especially memorable which is a shame because as scripted they are both great moments, especially the first one which subverts the usual Dalek shtick and sees them behaving in an unusual fashion, which is often when they are at their best. It’s non-stop action with some pleasant character moments for the Doctor and Romana (I feel that Briggs understands the characters without ever attempting to probe them too much) but very much the first half of a much larger story and you might feel a little short changed once you have reached the end of the disc purely because it abruptly stops just as the story hits a dramatic high. I’m not sure how to judge The Dalek Contract on it’s own merits because so much of it’s effect will depend upon the concluding half (we still don’t know why the Daleks have teamed up with Cuthbert or what his experiments entail) but needless to say this was diverting, time-honoured Who of the sort that I will never get tired of, even if it isn’t exactly firing at full throttle. What others will make of this undemanding effort is beyond me, but it does at least entertain for an hour and thanks to an authentic score really feels like it has come from the era: 6/10

The Claws of Axos written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin and directed by Michael Ferguson

This story in a nutshell: A new alien menace comes to sap the resources of the Earth...

The Mighty Nose: This is the season eight third Doctor so the idea of trying to catagorise him in an official capacity is probably enough to bring him out in hives. Considering his enforced exile on Earth it makes perfect sense that the MOD would want some kind of background on this mysterious figure who commands the authorities and is the first line of defence for the planet when alien nasties come calling. It is the sort of thing that show hasn't had to think about before because everything four weeks or so the Doctor whisks off to another time and place. He can't run away from his responsibilities anymore, nor can he hide from the consequences of his actions and clearly both rub him up the wrong way. I think any right minded induvidual would take a dislike to somebody as officious and bumbling as Chinn but considering the Doctor is in quite a precarious position and loathing his exile he really has at him, reminding him that England isn't the be all and end all and that they should be taking responsibility for the world and not just one damp little island. During the first two episodes of Claws of Axos the impossible happens, there is so much incident and so many characters that the Doctor is practically swamped by them all. To rectify this problem the writers chose to go down a very interesting path with the Doctor, turning him into an anti-hero for the first time since the early Hartnell stories. There was the suggestion that the second Doctor might be working against Jamie in Evil of the Daleks but that is always being seen as working under duress and he shows the appropriate empathy for his companion. Because he was so anti-establishment in season seven (clearly Verity Lambert wasn't watching that closely given how the Doctor insults, exploits and manipulates the many scientific institutes he winds up becoming a part of in his first year on Earth) and because he is always butting heads with Lethbridge-Stewart, his decision to defect and run off with the Master actually feels entirely reasonable given the evidence we have seen. I love the thought of him having wound Jo and UNIT around his little finger and at the same time is working out his escape from the planet, even if the cost is the exploitation of the Earth by an alien menace. Of course the whole thing is a big con but for a few delightful minutes nobody is entirely sure which side the Doctor is on and he basks in the theatricality of his apparent villainy. The line 'we either escape together or die together' is wonderfully cutting, suggesting a life of crime with the Master or being trapped on the Earth as it is going down the pan. And the Doctor being such an old ham he really plays up the role and enjoys the smugness of finally telling the Brigadier to get off and waving his hanky at Jo. It is a testament to the strength of the third Doctor's early characterisation that had this been for real, I would have had no objections that it hadn't been set up appropriately.

Groovy Chick: What an odd one Jo Grant is in season eight. I can't decide whether she is bright and resourceful (The Mind of Evil) or a wailing victim (The Daemons). The Claws of Axos is not a great story for the character because aside from screaming at the monsters or showing appropriate horror at the Doctor's betrayal she is left entirely at the sidelines and doesn't impact the story in any significant way. If grasping hold of your head and screaming ineffectually was an art form then I would say Katy Manning has mastered it after this adventure - she spends most of the story lost in a psychedelic wilderness and spazzing out. This might very well be her very worst story, not the worst story that she is in (I would say that belongs to The Mutants), but the worst one for servicing her character with decent material – the scene where she is screaming ‘I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!’ hysterically might just be the nadir for her character. Katy Manning has proven herself time and again to be a formidable actress, jump forward to season ten where she is dishing out charismatic performances aplenty and her work with Big Finish has really suggested a versatility previously unsuspected. It is a shame that writers occasionally shoehorned her into the shrinking violet companion role - she reminds me here of the most useless companions we have seen to date (Susan, Victoria).

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘I have a duty to my country!’ ‘ Not to the world?’
‘I doubt even Axonite could control the growth of human common sense.’
‘Axonite is simply bait for human greed.’
‘I suppose you could take the usual sort of precautions for a nuclear blast like sticky tape on the windows, that sort of thing.’
‘The Claws of Axos are already deeply embedded in the Earth’s carcass!’

The Good Stuff: Pigbin Josh, man. What a legend. How people can complain about the realisation of this story baffles. Michael Ferguson is one of the shows most stylish directors and throws everything he possibly can at the screen to make this a truly alien experience. It is true that the effects aren't up to the task at times but with a mixture video effects, fades, blends, physcial effects, colourful, organic sets and great costumes the production team manage to make the interior of Axos every bit is psychedelic and alien as they possibly can. Okay so the exterior might look like a mutated, pulsing penis but who could forget the flailing claws that grab at your from the walls, the wriggling tendrils, the breathing floors, the eye appendage, the beautiful Axon creatures in humanoid form, eyes shooting open from the walls, foaming bubbles threatening to envelop the camera and finally the genuinely chilling spaghetti Axonite creatures. Some of effects do surprise such as the repulsive melting Axon head and the sequence where Jo ages to death before the Doctor's eyes. Sound effects are used atmospherically too; the constant pulsing of a heartbeat and the screaming wail of the Axon creatures. Whilst it might be a little too busy in places (can you imagine what this script read like before Terrance Dicks streamlined it?) there are so things thrown at you as a viewer it is on occasion a genuinely unnerving experience. It is nice that this is an alien species that doesn't want to approach the Earth guns blazing but instead enjoys a more insidious approach, offering us something that appeals to our vanity that will allow them to embed their claws into the planets carcass. The Doctor so often comes up against violent, brutish forces that it makes a surprising change to present a menace that has thought through its takeover and decided to use a little psychology. The organic science is a lovely idea and the method that Axonite absorbs, observes, transmits and programmes could end humanity’s struggle with famine. But not with the UK government trying to keep it for themselves... Just as the Doctor has come to the attention of the MOD, so the Master and his murderous schemes have been flagged by Washington  and the American government has decided that the rogue Time Lord should be dealt with once and for all. I like it when the show suggests an international presence, it suddenly feels like we are taking the threat of the Master seriously and it always makes a point of showing what happens when UNIT fails in their duty. Watch the sequence where Bill Filer is duplicated, a very simple effect where one version of the character walks away from the other. Simple, but effective. I don't think that this is one of the strongest stories to feature Roger Delgado's Master but just his presence elevates the whole thing considerably. It's not until the last two episodes that he does anything especially significant but when he does pop out of the woodwork, he's great fun. Can you imagine anything more fun than a role reversal? The Doctor is the villain of the piece and the Master is scientific adviser to UNIT? It's when he wanders into the Doctor's (extremely tatty looking) TARDIS and declares it a right botch up when he really shines. What a shame we never got to see these two out in the universe getting up to mischief together? Can you imagine how an entire series of stories with the Doctor and his arch enemy lost in time and space would be? It took me a while to realise that David Savile was the same man who played Carstairs in The War Games, such was the difference with how he approached the two characters. I can't say I was sorry when he was killed, though. You’ve got to love the Doctor’s reaction to the discovery that the TARDIS is programmed to always return to Earth – everybody looks happy about it except him!

The Bad Stuff: I'm quite a fan of the electronic music that Barry Letts enforced on season eight but there are times during The Claws of Axos where it sounds as though Dudley Simpson has started attacking his equipment in a violent frenzy. This is more of a story of idea so many of the characters that we meet are simply there to service the plot rather than stand up as individuals in their own right (season seven managed to maintain both throughout its entire run). Chinn is one of those characters whose purpose is to get in the way, Filer lacks even basic conviction a CIA agent and Windsor is so unrealistically obstinate it can only be in the vain hope to try and create some drama. I never got the impression that any of them existed outside of the confines of this story. Whilst (as discussed above) I found the crawling sheet of lasagne pasta a little too hard to swallow (hoho - I'm here all week) - it is the one element of Axos that really feels like a man wrapped up in a sheet and I probably would have scrapped it. Why is it that characters in 70s drama shout out plot points when they are supposedly comatose as Filer does here? When does that ever happen in real life? Benton clearly isn't on the ball this week, falling for the worst Master disguise on record (seriously...it even looks like a rubber mask...it even sounds like he talking through the mouthpiece of a rubber mask!). That guy just isn't trying anymore. Mind you, you might questions the Master's arch villain status when he doesn;t realise that he has been surrounded by an entire platoon of UNIT soldiers. I agree with the Master, the Doctor’s TARDIS looks more knackered than ever and is desperately in need of the Colony in Space redesign. Hardiman rather impressively gets electrocuted and does a complete somersault over the edge of the precipice. Is that the effect of an electric shock these days? The location work during the Benton/Yates car siege is really impressive (especially the explosion as the trundles down the hill) but sabotaged by that terrible backdrop during the close ups in the studio. You would have thought they could have matched up to the colour of the sky. Would you really drive back into the debris after a nuclear power plant has just blown up?

Result: If Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks disliked the Earthbound formula so much and wanted the show take flight into the universe again but couldn't because of the impositions placed by their predecessors, this is probably the best compromise they could come up with. A genuinely outlandish alien threat coming to the Earth in their spaceship and threatening the planet. It is the best of both worlds, with the Earthbound formula being given some consideration (and there is plenty of UNIT action) but a fascinating menagerie of creatures and weird alien technology to explore. It is probably the most out there story since The Web Planet and that might explain the love/hate relationship some (including myself) seem to have with it. I have always had an on/off relationship with The Claws of Axos. I remember when it first came out on video I really struggled with it. It just looked so gaudy and crazy and weird, not really what I wanted from Doctor Who at the time. When the story came out on DVD I bought it like the sad completist that I am but had no intention of putting it on. However when I started introducing Simon to the show he fell in love with the first three Doctor's and asked if we could put this one on. I spent the first two episodes criticisng and cringing and apologising for the effects and at the end of episode he told me that if I didn't shut up and start enjoying the thing then we wouldn't watch anymore. Suddenly I started to notice the ambition in the concepts, the imagination in the design and the direction and how everybody was doing their damnedest to convince that this scenario was actually taking place. My husband made me appreciate Doctor Who more! I do think that the story struggles to balance the more adult themes of season seven with the more colourful and entertainment focus of season eight and as a result it is mixture of very clever ideas and memorable action mixed in with weak characterisation and poor logic. It juggles far too many ideas for four episodes but the resulting effect is that if you don't like where the story is at the moment there will be something else around the corner to distract you any minute. Trippy direction and a genuinely alien environments paper over some truly dodgy characterisation and performances. It’s a fun story written by two enthusiastic writers but perhaps it could have done with another rewrite to smooth out some rough edges and had a little more money thrown at it to fulfil its grand ambitions: 7/10