Big Finish Reviews+ The Entropy Plague by Tony J Fyler

 

It’s later than you think, says Tony. 

‘It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done. 

It is a far, far better rest I go to, than I have ever known.’ 

Sydney Carton, Dickens’ hero in A Tale of Two Cities, is often held up as a paragon of self-sacrifice for a greater cause, but god, he must have been a pain in the bum at parties. The Entropy Plague is, in a way, like being trapped for two hours in a party with a whole boatload of Cartons. It’s also phenomenally difficult to review without giving away a massive CVE of a spoiler for a fact which runs through the whole story. 

Let’s say this. The Entropy Plague is about exactly what it sounds like it’s about: entropy, the central force that distinguishes E-Space stories from most N-Space stories, both affecting everything in its normal, if here accelerated, fashion, and also transferred as a plague in a game of ‘Fall-Apart Touch’. The main monsters aren’t really monsters, any more than the Mummy in Mummy On The Orient Express was, and indeed, they bear a striking audio resemblance to that dangly-bandaged unfortunate, inasmuch as you really don’t want to let ‘The Sandmen’ touch you. Think plague-infected zombies and you’re most of the way there. So far, so not that original, to be fair. 

On the planet Apollyon, people from all over E-Space are gathering for a New Orleans, Day of the Dead-style party while the last of their universe burns or turns to dust. 

Of course, there are the plague-zombies, but hey, we’re all about to die anyway, so they never really achieve much in the way of scares. They’re just an additional irritant on the day the universe ends. 

Meanwhile, a man named Pallister, played with haughty implacability by Robert Duncan, seems to have a plan – even, perhaps a way out of the desolation of the universe. He’s found the last remaining CVE in E-Space on Apollyon, and he has a way of keeping it open long enough to get a refugee ship out. Hooray for Pallister, saviour of the universe! Except the way he has is gruesome in the extreme, and it frames the moral dilemma at the heart of the story: greater love hath no man than he should lay down his life for his friends, sure – but who do you choose to be the man doing the laying down? 

Of course, this is where the whole Sydney Carton thing comes in – and it divides the Tardis crew right down the middle, with the Doctor’s god complex making him almost eager to step into the breach and be stranded forever in the pocket universe, and Nyssa – good girl, always-helpful, self-sacrificing Nyssa, almost challenging him to an arm-wrestle for the honour of being thrown into the steampunk piece of kit that can not only get a ship out of E-Space but also stabilize the universe for a few hundred years, rather than the few hundred minutes it seems to have left. It would of course render listening to the story entirely pointless to tell you if either of them succeeds in their tug-o’-self-sacrifice or whether another, MacGuffiny solution is found, but the differing views of the two ‘good’ characters and the two more realistic ones, Tegan and Turlough, is deliciously comic to listen to. In particular, all credit to Mark Strickson for delivering Turlough’s arch-rationalist lines in this story like the only sane person in a suicide squad. In fact, for those who never really appreciated Turlough on screen, this story has enough from him to make the almost unthinkable happen – you might start to like him. Just a bit. 

Maybe. 

If you’re any kind of Nyssa fan, you’re absolutely going to have to listen to this one too, as it’s as close as either the TV show or Big Finish have ever coming to delivering a personality profile of her character. As a final act for an audio E-Space trilogy, there’s a certain inevitable slightness to the storytelling – the main dilemma is revealed fairly quickly, and the moral maze rather dissipates when you have a boatload of volunteers to put their neck in the entropy noose. The entropy plague itself is pretty much an irrelevance, except inasmuch as it highlights the state of the universe we’re dealing with, and the single line that ties this story back to Warrior’s Gate is all very well but never gets a second reference to build it into something. Writer Jonathan Morris delivers probably the most outright E-Space-flavoured of the three E-Space stories of the Fifth Doctor trilogy of which it’s a part. That said, The Entropy Plague’s big spoilerific story element means it’s one that you’ll almost have to listen to if anything going forward with the Fifth Doctor’s Tardis is going to make any sort of sense, and it does deliver a viable ‘return to N-Space’ plotline, so on at least two of its crucial levels, as well as in terms of characterization for Tegan, Turlough and Nyssa, it delivers its goods. While having paid full price for The Entropy Plague feels like a little bit of a swizz, it’s undoubtedly one to listen to before you pay out for any future Fifth Doctor releases. Will you go back to The Entropy Plague for a second listen any time soon? No, probably not. But you really will have difficulty with everything that subsequently happens in the Fifth Doctor’s timeline until you get this one under your belt.

 

 

Big Finish Reviews+ The Secret History by Tony J Fyler

 

Tony reads between the lines. 

Spoiler Alert! 

The Secret History has a cover. Seriously, if you’ve heard a range of Big Finish stories before you come to this, and the chances are you will have, don’t look at the cover of this one – it gives you a visual detail and a name that will slot together nicely and ruin some good ‘It’s not me, honest’ voice-work on the part of an actor in this story, and give you the main villain not only of this release but of the three ‘locum Doctors’ stories, of which this is the finale. So – order with your eyes closed, download with just one eye watching the progress bar or slip your CD from its cover with your hand over the front. 

Done that? Good. Now prepare yourself. The final of the three ‘locum Doctor’ stories promises to be a highly exciting meet-up between the callow Fifth Doctor and Steven and Vicki, who are used to the white-haired and rather more commanding old First Doctor. What’s more, it’s a proper old historical adventure in the Marco Polo or Aztecs vein – the Tardis left behind in one part of the ancient world (Ravenna), while the Tardis crew beggar about in Constantinople, consorting with emperors, generals, and classical writers. It’s a good old-fashioned historical romp. 

Except of course, it isn’t – because there are alien shenanigans at work, swapping Doctors about within their own timestreams. That whole plotline is deliciously, excitingly played here – it’s probably not too much to reveal that the Doctor has crossed paths with quite a few villains with a penchant for getting involved in local affairs, disguising themselves as natives to the time or place, but this one feels particularly right, and their reasons for doing what they do are spot-on, both in terms of the petard on which they hoist the Fifth Doctor, (who in a significant out-of-character moment, suggests giving modern antibiotics to victims of the Justinian plague), and in their ultimate devious plan, which has wound its way through the three locum Doctors stories, but which, to be fair, you pretty much need this episode to explain to you, and add lots of value to the previous two stories. 

That ultimate devious plan, by the way? You may well think you’ve seen something fairly similar concocted on screen in the not hugely distant past, by another clever enemy that likes to mess with people. Perhaps it’s just coincidence, but there’s even a kind of Impossible Girl in here, played by the slightly posh acting wonderment that is Lysette Anthony. 

So – old-fashioned treks across large portions of the eastern world, emperors, generals, Impossible Girls, sneaky alien timestream-muckers-up, giant floating stone Medusa heads –

Wait, did I mention the giant floating stone Medusa heads? OK, well, there’s a pair of giant floating stone Medusa heads in here too. Annnnnd why not? You know damn well if Donald Cotton could have had the budget for giant floating stone Medusa heads in The Romans, they’d have been in it. As it happens, they’re quite important in the ultimate resolution of the plot, so there’s a tip for you – keep your ears on the giant floating stone Medusa heads.

Where the fusion between the tone of the First Doctor period and the tone of the absolutely bang-up-to-date, never-mind-Peter-Davison-try-Matt-Smith show becomes a stroke of genius is what happens when the devious alien messer-about of timelines actually wins. What follows is half-pastiche, half differentiation of the difference between the Doctor and the villain – a difference which has never been entirely, one hundred percent evident, but becomes so here with a clarity that ultimately resolves the plot. It’s a great resolution to a seemingly impossible situation, and looked at one way, this story’s scope, and the scope of the locum Doctors mini-series overall, should elevate the central villain to the A-List where they have never truly been before, despite being a firm favourite among discerning fans.

There’s every temptation to take The Secret History too seriously, but writer Eddie Robson and director Barnaby Edwards don’t want you to get away with that – certainly the spirit of Donald Cotton’s Who farces, The Myth Makers and The Romans particularly, is alive and well here, but the only thing that allows good farce to still be a believable adventure story is believable characterisation, and Big Finish have skimped on neither story nor character. There’s actually not a single badly written, or even slightly written character in this story, Giles Watling as General Belisarius and Tony Millan as his lawyer Procopius being extra special fun as a kind of historical odd couple, suffering each other because their fates fare better together. Tim Wallers as the Emperor Justinian and Sarah Woodward as his languid yet waspish queen Theodora are another fine double act, and Tony Millan does extra-special double duty, giving a wholly different characterisation as Yazid the positively diseased hippodrome team-runner for a few good horse dung jokes at Steven’s expense, but also rather more than that in that we care what happens to him as much as any of the others. Peter Purves and Maureen O’Brien as Steven and Vicki are of course old hands together, but here they do something quite important – they highlight the periodicity of First Doctor stories. Whereas in most Big Finish stories, the trick has been to make their characters and situations realistic, deep and believable, here they dial it back the other way slightly to show not just the characters as they would have been, but also to present 1960s Who as a world of its own, for 80s Doctor Davison to stroll around in. 

The Secret History is pretty much fun no matter what you’re looking for – traditional First Doctor adventuring in the ancient world, with a chunk of learning melted through; Fifth Doctor style being curious about things and finding alien skulduggery behind the tapestries; ultra-modern timeline-twisting plotlines or gentle historical farce. The story works without feeling like it’s had to be whipped into peculiar shapes – a particular triumph to pull off with a First Doctor-style historical trek – and it’s enjoyable throughout every minute of its running time. 

The only thing that’s massively, massively wrong with it is the spoilerific cover. Manage to avoid that, and this is pure class from beginning to end.

Who Reviews Enlightenment by Matt Rabjohns

 

Several classic Doctor Who serials were beset with countless production problems. Enlightenment was threatened by an electrician's strike which meant that the story ran behind schedule, and due to this several of the character roles had to be recast at very short notice. Considering this story turns out to still be a cracker of a story this is nothing short of a resounding testament to the dedication of the director and the actors involved in the story. I for one consider it a great stroke of good fortune that this story managed to finally be completed so we could enjoy what has to be one of the most original and entertaining fifth Doctor stories of all. 

I think it highly insulting that women writers barely ever were given the chance to contribute to the show. I am also greatly annoyed that in the end just this solo script was accepted from Barbara Clegg when she obviously had a real grasp of creating sublime and eerie and memorable drama that succeeds on so many levels. It is wonderful that two of her other proposed ideas have now at least been brought into the light of day by Big Finish Productions as audio dramas. These two others being Point of Entry and The Elite. Both exude the same excellence of characterisation that permeates Enlightenment. I most certainly, would have paid to see more stories from this extremely accomplished lady. 

The notion of a intergalactic space race with old fashioned looking sailing ships is a real gem of a story idea. That Barbara weaves this idea into a very coherent but suitably well-paced script is wonderful considering the problems the production team had during its making. The acting on show in this story for a start is absolutely first rate. I think I would even go as far as to say that this is perhaps within the top tier of Peter Davison's stories. 

For a start Cyril Luckham and Valentine Dyall are electrically charged in their respective roles of the White and Black Guardian. Valentine particularly shines and exudes palpable fear with that creepy and resonant voice he always had as an actor. Every scene he is in he dominates effortlessly. He truly made the Black Guardian a tantalisingly evil and cruel villain and it's so richly rewarding to see an actor of such distinction bring alive such a brilliant character. His anger at Turlough for failing to kill the Doctor is a delight to watch. And yet the more restrained Cyril Luckham wonderfully acts as a terrific foil to the sharp and malicious Black Guardian with his calmer, and more refined approach to the White Guardian. The final scene with the two of them together is one of the highlights of the story. 

Keith Barron is incredibly polished as the Eternal Leader Captain Striker. He manages to make the villain totally soulless in a way that deeply unsettles and he never less than a riveting performer. The wonderfully vivacious Lynda Baron of Open All Hours fame too is delicious in the role of the acidic and heartless Captain Wrack. She is clearly delighted to be playing the role and she also manages to dominate and steal every scene in which she participates in. 

Christopher Brown as Marriner, Striker's second in Command, is also highly entertaining. He is actually rather inept in his seeming failure to leave Tegan alone during the story. I adore the interactions between his love sick puppy act and Tegan's increased annoyance at basically being stalked by the soulless alien eternal. I love that Tegan too is shown to have brains and she is able to keep her innermost thoughts hidden from the mind reading creep. Again, these make for some memorable and fun scenes along the way. 

The Eternals are a wonderfully unique villain too and their depiction as bored beings cursed with eternal life and craving the diversion of short-lived human souls with ragged emotions and diverting feelings is a very unsettling idea. I for one am surprised that these heartless alien nasties never returned to the show afterwards. 

The Guardian Trilogy, as it was known, Mawdryn Undead, Terminus and finally, this tale is also by far the strongest period of stories for Mark Strickson's Turlough. I for one find it a crying shame that after these initial heavily charged entries for his character that Turlough then became increasingly ill written and abandoned throughout his later appearances on the show. Here in Enlightenment Mark clearly shows his class as an actor. And his performance as the hapless Trion Man attempting to break his bonds to the Black Guardian gives the story that extra edge that sets it above any of his other stories. Mark Strickson had the potential to be fantastic, and in his three introductory efforts he proved his mettle and it's a crying shame later stories would seem to forget he was even a part of the stories. 

Enlightenment stands as a brilliantly display of what the show can do even under the threat of many production problems. The set design too is delightfully pleasing on the eye and the costume design is stunning. This all helps to round off Enlightenment as definitely a story I would pick to display just how brilliant the Peter Davison era of the show could be. It is when the show is inventive like this under pressure that it shows us why it is a show that has endured the passage of time, and why the show is still going just as strongly today. 

Yes, I wish we had had more from the imagination of Barbara Clegg. Enlightenment was a stroke of writing prowess I am glad defied its production teething problems and emerged as one of the very finest stories of 80's Doctor Who...

 

Big Finish Reviews+ Nightmare Country by Tony J Fyler

Welcome to Nightmare Country, says Tony.

Stephen Gallagher’s history with on-screen Doctor Who extends to just two stories.

Nightmare Country is story number three.

He’s on record – not least in the Behind The Scenes material on this release – as saying that he wasn’t especially happy with the way his first script for the show, Warriors’ Gate, turned out. He’d done a great deal of work on the script, and quite a lot of it proved unusable within the timescales, and more importantly the budgets of the early-Eighties BBC (at least according to then-script editor, Christopher H Bidmead), leaving Warriors’ Gate a fairly high-concept script rendered into BBC being by quiiiiite a lot of nothing, some great models and effects shots, some less-great scenic images and a cast of good actors trying gamely to make the strides the script demanded of them and not really getting there.

Gallagher, he says, had a bit of a moan about it to then-producer John Nathan-Turner. Nathan-Turner’s response was to commission Gallagher to write his second script, Terminus. There were some similarities in the material – a shipful of malcontents in a troubled situation, a hugely tall animal biped who saves people after being treated badly, and a beloved companion being somewhat hastily written out at the end (Romana in Warriors’ Gate, Nyssa in Terminus).

Nightmare Country was Gallagher’s pitch for Season 21 – the season which started with the chronically overlit return of the Silurians and Sea Devils, and got better as it went on, culminating in Peter Davison’s swansong, The Caves of Anrozani, before effectively jumping off a cliff with the first Sixth Doctor story, The Twin Dilemma. The one, if you recall, which featured a giant slug as the villain, despite it looking like a roll of dodgy Student Union carpet after Freshers’ Week with a pair of Elton John’s spare glasses stuck on top.

‘You’ve sent us another million-dollar movie and we just can’t do them’ read the note Gallagher received from the Doctor Who production office in response to his Nightmare Country pitch.

To be fair, if they couldn’t manage a bipedal slug, they may have had a point.

Now, thanks to the power of audio and the determination of Big Finish to meet demand from fans that every nook and cranny of potential storytelling be explored, Nightmare Country has finally seen the light of day. And certainly, the audio medium is its friend, because as an experience, it’s the least esoteric, most down-to-earth of Gallagher’s three Davison-era scripts.

That’s not at any point to claim it’s not hellishly complex, because it is, certainly as far as its core ideas are concerned – the Doctor has agreed to help a race called the Volos…do something complicated, involving a small team of…well, mental terraformers, essentially, to build a world out of pure firmament and their conscious thoughts. Planet-building, to order, by the power of a small collective of minds in a shared consciousness matrix, while their bodies remain in the conventional material universe. The tricky thing about which is that anyone who goes into the semi-comatose state necessary to do the job wakes up in the virtual space of planet-creation without the slightest idea of how they got there. Which you might think – and spoiler alert, you’d be right – makes the whole planet-building thing a touch on the tricky side. Especially when it turns out the mindspace looks like a world of relics and old bones, and there’s a horrifying enemy in situ to hamper proceedings – a species called the Vodyani.

With it so far?

Introduce some scientific skulduggery and the accidental inclusion of a history of war, and we’re off to the races – the Doctor, who doesn’t know he’s the Doctor, must help the strangers he encounters, who are suspicious of him, to escape the clutches of the Vodyani, do…something they can’t quite remember, and if at all possible, get out of the mindspace they don’t know is a mindspace by walking through a very particular door.

Still with it? Anyone weeping for the straightforward impossibilities of Warriors’ Gate yet?

Relax a little. The great mantra of creative writing is ‘Show, don’t tell.’ Which is why Nightmare Country works a great deal better as an experience than it’s ever going to do in explanations on a page. While the Doctor’s quest for enlightenment and the emergency exit goes on inside the mindspace, Tegan and Turlough each have a strand of activity to keep them busy – Tegan becomes a volunteer to go and bring the Doctor back, while Turlough tackles the skulduggery that has at least in part led to the whole ‘conscious planet-building’ thing going spectacularly wrong.

Turlough comes out of Nightmare Country with honours – which would have been consistent with the development of his character-arc (such as it was) in Season 21, away from desperate exile-turns-would-be-killer and into something more genuinely helpful and at ease with his knowledge. On-screen, there would have been a greater treat for viewers too, because there are scenes in this story set in the secondary control room, that great old wood-panelled version of a Tardis console room that had paved the way for experimental console room design and took the show away from the necessity of a brightly lit, mostly white Tardis interior. Turlough flips all manner of necessary switches in that old room here to help defeat a cunning opponent in a game of Zero Room hide and seek, showing himself to be clever, resourceful and even, when it absolutely comes to it and there’s no more slimy alternative, rather merciful.

That said, Tegan’s journey in this story shows what could have been (with a tweak here and there), a much more satisfying departure story for her character than was actually delivered on-screen in the last handful of heartbeats of Resurrection of the Daleks (Come on, this is the writer who got rid of Romana, K9 and Nyssa, you know you want to pop into the alternative universe where he got to write out Tegan too). Tegan here shows not so much what she’s learned from the quietly heroic Fifth Doctor, but what was latent in her from the very beginning – a desire to help people, and to facilitate their lives through the actions of her own. It would have been a much stronger, nobler, less what-the-hell ending for the mouth on legs, and it works beautifully well within the confines of this story too. There’s even, and whisper this because no-one can believe it, hugging between Tegan and the Doctor before everything goes staggeringly wrong. Again.

That’s a thing that certainly feels developed in Nightmare Country on audio – the pacing’s good, the cliff-hangers are strong enough to give you the necessary moment of shock, and the flipping of the script between episodes 3 and 4 really takes the energy of the whole thing up another couple of notches, as ideally it should do as you power on towards the climax of the story. Stephen Gallagher here, under Guy Adams as script editor and Ken Bentley’s direction, manages to both eat his cake and have it, delivering a script that’s at least as packed with mind-bending ideas as either of his two on-screen stories, but where the relationships between characters are for the most part less fraught, and therefore less hard work for listeners, and the threats become clearer and more concrete as each episode progresses.

The script and the main cast are significantly bolstered in delivering Gallagher’s vision in an engaging way by the presence of two Big Finish stalwarts in the cast – Tracy Wiles, who’s approaching her thirtieth Big Finish release, and Beth Chalmers, whose number’s nearly double that. New and exciting voices should of course always be used where possible, but when the ideas are complex (building planets by conscious thought-matrices, remember?), there’s something about having a couple of familiar voices alongside the Tardis team that helps the medicine go down in a most delightful way.

If you’re a fan of Warriors’ Gate and Terminus, you’re going to need to listen to this to hear what might have been, had Eighties Doctor Who had 2020 Doctor Who’s budget. If you’re not a particular fan of Stephen Gallagher’s on-screen Who, give this a listen anyway – it might well convince you that the things you’re not keen on were more a product of the spit-and-sawdust budgets of the Eighties production than of the scripts themselves, because on audio, where the listener brings the world to life by the power of their imagination, Nightmare Country’s a bit of a dream come true.

Big Finish Reviews+ Warzone/Conversion by Matt Rabjohns

Whilst Adric may not be many fans favourite companion to have ever graced the show, his death at the time in Earthshock was definitely a palpable and very moving moment in the history of the show. We had had deaths of companions before, with Katarina and Sara Kingdom in The Daleks Master Plan, but somehow Adric's death seems to be more vividly remembered. ​

​

The show at the time never dwelt much upon personal or emotional issues as much as they do in the modern era, so with Warzone/Conversion its very good to see Big Finish going into detail with how the Doctor and Nyssa and Tegan cope with the fallout of Earthshock. Do the writers succeed in delivering a memorable follow on to those shocking events? Well, the answer is yes in most respects. ​

​

Firstly, the sound production and music are truly authentic to the 80s era of the show. Impeccably so and the bonus interviews are always fun to listen to also. Always great to hear insight right from the actor’s mouths. ​

​

Warzone and Conversion are written by two different writers (Chris Chapman and Guy Adams) but the stories are directly linked. It is always very annoying though that Big Finish may not always use the monsters name in the titles, but they always have a picture of them on the front! This at once ruins any mystery the stories may have in my own view. However, if you can get past this annoyance and give the stories a chance, they are rather superb overall. ​

​

Warzone begins with the TARDIS team, together with new companion Marc, landing in Warzone. A massive gaming race track full of life-threatening obstacles in the best Doctor Who fashion of old. The story has very good pace and develops not quite as ludicrously quickly as most of the modern era show on telly does. The Doctor and his friends at once have to literally run for their lives and become embroiled in the race. And the Doctor soon discovers just what the race is for. The main plot thrust of this story may actually be one of the more simple given to a Big Finish story, but it is all the better for it. It gives the characters a firm background and the acting from all involved in this story is top notch and right on the nail. Two of the best actors in this first story are definitely Pepter Lunkuse as Esma. She interacts well with the Doctor over the course of the two episodes almost enough to make you think she has the potential to become a companion.

​

Timothy Blore as Morris works so well paired off with Nyssa. It’s good to hear Nyssa being given such a good role within the story. And she seems to strike up a great friendship with Morris so it’s quite sad and jarring at the riveting climax to part two to have to break apart the bonds that were forming between both Nyssa and Morris and The Doctor and Esma. The warning the Doctor gives to Esma and Morris about being strong willed enough to resist becoming the Cybermen is a brilliant scene. ​

​

Amidst all of this Tegan is not forgotten. The chemistry between her and George Watkin's as Marc is wonderful to listen to. It is quite the fearsome and soul destroying ride that Marc is forced to suffer in this story, and it is only going to get worse in Conversion. ​

​

Peter Davison is absolutely on his best form within these two stories, but especially in Conversion.

​

I will get the only niggle I have with this story out of the way first. The characters of Herb and Creasey just seem a bit too caricatured and clichéd. Though Angela Bruce gives a brilliant performance as Herb the characters are just absolutely nothing new and seem to be rather grafted on to the story rather than written in. Your typical run of the mill space pirates who aren't given anything original to handle. Mind you if you love space pirates then these two girls’ banter can be very amusing. I'll give them that. But that is where my niggles end. ​

​

The rest of the story is extremely well written. It gives Peter Davison the chance to display an angrier and more upset and therefore more rude and unknowable edge to his Doctor’s persona. It’s always excellent when actors get to rise above their normal game with an exceptional script, and this script definitely gives Peter the chance to blow our socks off with his titanic performance. ​

​

And then the delicious treat of once more being able to hear David Banks and Mark Hardy reprise their 80's Cyber roles just steals the show. Here in this story the Cybermen are truly soulless and incredibly nasty with their plans. The prototype conversion they almost succeed in performing on Marc is harrowing and George Watkins copes sublimely well in being totally broken and at his wit's end amidst this horrendous experiment. ​

​

The emotional impact on all the main crew of the TARDIS is palpable at the stories climax leading to a very unexpected ending. Tegan is truly unsettled and unforgiving of the darker side the Doctor has displayed during this story's run. Even in spite of the fact that against all the odds the Doctor has done his utmost to help Marc return to being as much of a human being as he can. Guy's writing in these final scenes is riveting and heart-breaking for all the main TARDIS team. ​

​

Conversion is the kind of cyberman story we need to see appearing on the screen in the new modern era televised Doctor Who! To me the serials the modern era has churned out have all rather fallen short of the mark, in that I think they have forgotten the Cybermen aren't robots, they happen to be dehumanized cyborgs! David Banks and Mark Hardy truly work on this fact well in Conversion. ​

​

The CyberLeader even gets to have a jibe at the Doctor, whom he accuses of being a hypocrite. The Doctor is resistant to murder, yet he destroyed the Cyber Leader in Earthshock. The only thing to offer in the Doctor's defence is that situation was one of acute stress and even a Time Lord is not perfect every day of the universal year. But it does add a gritty edge and bring out a touch of the mystery of who the Doctor truly actually is once more. Vague little titbits like this are scary to hear. It’s good to see Peter being given a more Seventh Persona role for once, after all, all the incarnations are still the same man.​

​

Warzone/Conversion in summation then are two extremely well written stories on the whole. They are a truly stark and belting follow on from the sombre and sad events of Earthshock. I can only hope that Marc can somehow recover from his ordeal. Truly the impact of what the Cybermen can do to people if they get hold of them has never been quite so well portrayed before. This story even beats the Bill Potts conversion of Peter Capaldi's Cyber epic. I would strongly recommend this story as a worthwhile and dark follow on to Earthshock. As two two parters they work extremely well indeed. But be prepared to be stirred by the huge amount of emotional gravitas injected into these episodes. ​

​

Although maybe one other little oddity is that Warzone/Conversion does seem to have forgotten the events of the earlier Big Finish release The Boy That Time Forgot. That story led us to believe that Adric in fact did not die but was left at the beginnings of time and went a little insane. Perhaps this is just forgetfulness although it does make the story's timeline placement rather unfathomable from my perspective, as Nyssa and the Doctor in the Boy story were without Tegan, so that means the story had to be set between the TV stories Time Flight and Arc of Infinity, and then Tegan returned but somehow The Good Doc and Nyssa seem to have lost all memory of the events of the Boy that Time Forgot, so that's just a little strange. But it’s not a major quibble, and it’s not as if the show isn't constantly mucking around with its own history and time lines!

Who Reviews Castrovalva by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s walking up the down staircase.

  

First stories are always – or at least mostly always – unreliable affairs that at best give you an inkling of what the new Doctor will be like. In the history of Doctor Who, it’s also become quite the thing for new Doctors to spend most of their first story asleep, confused, staggering about the place or, in one later case, just a bit psychotic, to stir the pot of confusion as to what the emergent Doctor’s personality will be like once they’ve settled down and got on with some proper Doctoring.

Castrovalva, like Spearhead from Space before it and The Christmas Invasion many years later, chooses to put the Doctor into a restorative sleep for great chunks of its story. Were one to be in a particularly cruel or catty mood, one could say that in Castrovalva’s case, the Doctor had perhaps read the script in advance and decided to get forty winks in while he could.

The joy, the exuberance of Doctor Who was under significant attack at that time, as the supposed silliness of the Graham Williams and Douglas Adams team gave way to the John Nathan-Turner/Christopher H Bidmead era of equally supposed but rather more self-proclaimed seriousness. Hence, the exuberant Fourth Doctor was written out in a forgettable beige maths-lesson of a story (Logopolis), and the new Doctor, the youngest to date, was written in with what amounts to nothing much beyond an homage to Escher and his geometrically-impossible but philosophically interesting drawings.

Castrovalva is a trap from start to finish – a plot of the newly-regenerated Master’s to trap the Doctor and his friends in an ever-confusing looping of space and time so things happen again and again without ever getting anywhere. It’s been noted elsewhere that John Nathan-Turner, bless him, had an almost catastrophic gift of taking the narrative inside the viewer’s mind and slapping it up on screen. After the show had been on hiatus for eighteen months and its very future was at stake, it was Nathan-Turner who would decide to put the Doctor on very public trial in later years.

The writing of this instinct is very much on the wall in Castrovalva, where after years of the assured and beaming presence of Tom Baker in the Tardis, many fans were unsure that this callow Davison youth could effectively embody the role of their favourite Time Lord. Hence, with the audience-calming instinct of a lemming, in Castrovalva the young new Doctor announces ‘I’m the Doctor – or will be if this regeneration works out,’ ‘That’s the trouble with regeneration – you never quite know what you’re going to get’ and ‘Oh no – the regeneration is failing!’ Way to calm fears, there.

Add to that the odd division of the story into ‘Tardis sections’ where the Doctor wanders about getting swamped by previous versions of himself and then going for a mid-air nap, ‘Master sections’ where the new Master gets his Fifty Shades of Adric on round the back of the Tardis set, and then the actual Castrovalvan plot, which is so basic a fully-regenerated Doctor of any stripe would sort it out within minutes, not to mention the seemingly endless shots of Nyssa and Tegan trudging around the woods with a Zero Coffin supported between them, and what Castrovalva gave us back in the day was a way to confirm many of our worst fears straight off the bat - this was not a Time Lord we recognised. If anything, for most of the run-time of Castrovalva, the Fifth Doctor rather fails to take much shape at all.

When he finally begins to pull himself together, in an environment of books and learned blokes with beards though, there are glimmerings. Hopeful glimmerings of a new way of being the Doctor. He could probably do the running about and standing up to villains, but this new young Doctor, aided by a certain height and slimness of stature, seems more like a Thinking Doctor. A quieter Doctor, who clocks everything that’s going on, and while everyone else is running about and panicking, pieces solutions together, allowing him, at the crucial moment, to tear a tapestry, throw a thingummybob and save the universe. That, it becomes clear, is how this Doctor rolls – always thinking, only acting when he absolutely needs to, and when he’s absolutely certain of being effective. As such, it’s a very different Doctor to the one who fell to his death off a Big High Telescopey Thing in the previous story, but even though about 75% of Castrovalva is taken up with faff and sleeping, in the time he gets to really stamp his Doctor on the screen, Peter Davison does something that gives us a different direction, a different take on the character. In essence, he does the same sort of thing as his eventual successor in the Youngest Doctor stakes, Matt Smith, does in his first story, The Eleventh Hour. He takes what’s on the page and makes you focus on his Doctor while everything else is going to hell. Focus on Peter Davison when he emerges from his nap in Castrovalva and you won’t go far wrong – even while Anthonly Ainley, bless him, is trying to act him off the screen as the Portreve, and doing a damn good job of it too. It’s Davison’s gathering into himself of the role that catches and keeps the eye, as he becomes a point of focus while the mathematical rules of matter go utterly tits-up and old men turn out to be invigorated evil gits, and history turns out to have been written this afternoon. Peter Davison, by the end of Castrovalva - or rather by about the end of Episode 3 of Castrovalva – is the Doctor. He’s by no means Tom Baker’s Doctor, but you can’t take your eyes off the young blond man, because it’s like someone has poured the essence of the Doctor into this man’s frame and he’s been coming to terms with the oldness of himself in the youngness of his body, and by the end of Episode 3, he’s ready to do the whole universe-saving thing, but in his own way and his own style.

Castrovalva is unlikely ever to top polls of ‘favourite regeneration’ stories – almost every other regeneration story is better than it, with perhaps a notable exception for ‘the next one.’ But against the background of a shonky script and an endlessly beige ‘world,’ Davison and Ainley together succeed in wringing some drama, some meditations on renewal, and above all, a new way of being the Doctor that doesn’t involve being Tom Baker, out of the story, kicking us into a new era of a show that had long seemed inseparable from its previous star.

Who Reviews Arc of Infinity by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s on the Arc.

Arc of Infinity opened up Peter Davison’s second season as the Doctor, and goodness me, but it did a lot.

It brought back a previously one-shot enemy from Jon Pertwee’s era for another adventure – itself a risky business, especially when that one-shot was The Three Doctors. It took us back to Gallifrey for the first time since The Deadly Assassin – always a risky business, because Gallifrey can end up looking almost  uniquely unimpressive if you translate it from ‘Planet of the all-powerful Time Lords’ to ‘Something you can build in a studio.’ It took the show out of the UK on overseas filming for the first time since City of Death, and for no technically better reason than it hadn’t been done in a while, meaning lots of shots of the Tardis crew cycling round Amsterdam. And it brought back Tegan, who’d been unceremoniously dumped at Heathrow Airport at the end of Time-Flight, just one story after the team had lost Adric to the Cybermen’s plans in Earthshock.

So – quite a lot to be getting on with then.

The plot mostly involves the return of Omega, the visionary Time Lord engineer responsible for the Time Lords’ ability to time travel, and something of a childhood hero of the Doctor’s. Last seen being literally not all there in The Three Doctors, he had drained energy from Gallifrey to the point where the only hope for the planet was to send three incarnations of the Doctor to his world of anti-matter to stop him.

This time around, the plot at least made a little more sense – Omega, still all anti-matter but with a brand new outfit so as not to let on who he was too early, has found a traitor on the Time Lord High Council, who’s prepared to jeopardise the planet again just to give the engineer a pathway back into the universe. This, it transpires, involves body-imprinting on the Doctor. The whole ‘Arc of Infinity’ thing is basically a region of space-time where odd crossovers are possible because the Arc shields antimatter, and one end of the Arc is in Amsterdam, on Earth.

This is where colossal amounts of coincidence kick into play in Johnny Byrne’s script, because Tegan’s cousin, Colin, has gone backpacking to Amsterdam. And then, he’s gone missing. Meaning Tegan goes to find out what the hell has happened to him. Meaning she crosses paths with the Doctor again, just in time for a lift back to the rest of the universe. Colin, incidentally, has crossed paths with one of the most unfortunate ‘monsters’ in Davison’s era – the Ergon. Or the Space Chicken, as it was less-than-fondly-known until Matt Smith crossed paths with an even more literal – but thankfully rather more invisible – space chicken in Vincent And The Doctor. The Ergon, bless it, looks like the last chicken nugget in the shop on a Saturday night, and it’s the slave of Omega, who’s messing about in Amsterdam because of the aforementioned antimatter shielding properties of the Arc.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Nyssa hightail it to Gallifrey to raise the alarm about possible shenanigans with antimatter, the Doctor gets very nearly put to death as a traitor, and runs afoul of an angry guard captain with feathers in his hat, by the name of Maxil – played by future Doctor, Colin Baker. The traitor on the High Council is forced to play their hand and reveal themselves, but all rather too late to be effective. Omega, having got the details of the Doctor’s body print, is up and about and looking almost but not entirely like Peter Davison, running around the streets of Amsterdam. Cue a chase sequence which exists more or less only to get the most out of the potential of Amsterdam filming and one extraordinary sequence: Omega, revelling in having flesh again, and company, and being in touch with other people after countless centuries alone, stops to watch a sideshow, and smiles, and interacts with a young child who is kind to him. And there, right there, is where Arc of Infinity breaks your heart. There’s much talk in The Three Doctors of how Omega should have been revered among his people, and how the loneliness of his existence in the antimatter universe has driven him stark raving bonkers, but there in that sequence, in a mirroring of a similar moment in Frankenstein, where the monster encounters kindness and responds to it, we see the potential of a happy outcome, and for perhaps the briefest of seconds we wonder if the Doctor has the right to take it from him. Our hero is our hero because of his capacity for sacrifice. Would he not sacrifice himself for one of the greatest heroes of his people, to give him the chance to live again after all this time?

But of course, the question is based on a faulty premise. In that moment, yes, Omega is sweet and kind, but he’s done a lot of unspeakable things to get there, and he doesn’t really care for life except his own. He’s taken the Doctor’s bioprint, rather than asking for it, rather, perhaps, than begging for it. If he’s given the opportunity to live again, how long will it be before people start to die, victims to his overweening sense of self-importance and entitlement?

When the Doctor seems to kill him, seems to send him to an oblivion he ultimately chooses, Arc of Infinity actually does something quite remarkable – it seems to close a loop of character-story that The Three Doctors, while not exactly leaving open, did not satisfactorily rersolve. Where the earlier story turned the potential of Omega into a raging, raving beast, Arc of Infinity brings him back from that and makes him a figure of compassion again, and even gives him a kind of acceptance and closure at the very end. Along the way, it’s arguable that Arc of Infinity gives us one of Nyssa’s strongest moments when she prepares to commit treason to save the Doctor’s life, and while the décor of Gallifrey is simply dreadful, it also brings together a strong cast of Time Lords, including Leonard Sachs as the latest Borusa on the block, Michael ‘Celestial Toymaker’ Gough as Councillor Hedin, Elspet Gray as Chancellor Thalia, Colin Baker as the fuming Maxil, and Paul ‘No, Not The Mind Probe’ Jericho as the Castellan. That only one of them would return for The Five Doctors, and that it would immortalise Jericho for that line, is an unfortunate reality, but while still looking like a naff place to live and work, Gallifrey had rarely been as well-populated with strong character actors before. Deadly Assassin, maybe, but it was by no means a regular thing.

Overall, Arc of Infinity – and Snakedance too to some extent – is a bright spot in Peter Davison’s second season before everything gets all heavy with the Black Guardian trilogy and the generally snarky days of Turlough. It’s an example of what Davison’s Fifth Doctor could do with a slightly less full Tardis and more room to breathe, and for the majority of the story, it’s a Davison dream-team of just the Doctor and Nyssa, pushing along their strand of the story and, like Tom Baker and his Romanas before them, elevating the essential conversations of life and time travel to a less emotional, more factual and scientific level without having to dumb things down for their friendly pet human. Add the reclamation of Omega and the high-ranking acting talent of the Gallifreyans, and it makes for a pacey, enjoyable watch. With perhaps just a smiiiiidgen too much schlepping about Amsterdam to justify the overseas shoot.

Big Finish Reviews+ The Gathering by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s gathering evidence.

‘If you stop enjoying it, give it up. It’s stopped being fun, Doctor…’

With those and a few more words, Tegan Jovanka ran out of the Fifth Doctor’s life after the absolute massacre that was Resurrection of the Daleks.

Big Finish is a company that believes in opening up the cracks in the canon and seeing what could lurk inside. The further adventures of Tegan were, when The Gathering was released, just a glint in the company’s eye. This was Janet Fielding’s first, and as far as anyone was concerned, really her only likely reprisal of Tegan’s role, and it was set some years after her departure.

What happens to a companion after they’ve seen time and space, travelled the dimensions with the Doctor, and run off, somewhat sickened by the lives he lets be lost?

Sometimes…not that much.

The Gathering (part of a loose trilogy of Cyberman stories which dared to re-imagine them, their tactics, and what they were able to do) finds Tegan older, and while she’s not exactly bitter, it’s true that her potential has somewhat evaded her. When she gets involved in the plans of her friend Katherine Chambers, whose life was radically altered by a Cyberman stratagem in the previous release, The Reaping, Tegan is dragged back into adventures with alien threats – and meets up again with the Doctor.

More than anything else – more than the innovative things they did with the Cybermen, and more than their dislocation for any kind of mainstream timeline, what the three ‘odd’ Cyber-stories, The Harvest, The Reaping and The Gathering, do best is push Doctor Who into the more adult territory that New Who had begun to make its own. Events and decisions have consequences in these stories, and while Joseph Lidster’s Gathering is perhaps the least strongly Cyber-plot-driven of the three, what he gives us here is absolute, 100-proof Tegan and Fifth Doctor arguing. But this isn’t the kind of arguing they used to do when he repeatedly failed to find Heathrow Airport the mid-80s. This is real arguing. Arguing that matters. Twenty years have passed, and Tegan believes she has a life. Mates. A purpose.

The Doctor, by contrast, feels she’s just marking time, hanging about, not engaging with people, as though her glimpse into the vastness of space and time, and the effect it had on her has stunted her, harmed her, broken her ability to connect to a single real life and her ability to make the most of it. Tegan’s response to his assumptions is a blistering tour de force, more challenging and powerful than anything Fielding was given to deliver in her TV years as Tegan, and while the pair absolutely have to deal with the imminent threat of Cyber-technology (somewhat confusingly left behind in Katherine Chambers’ past by the Doctor’s future self), and to some extent Tegan accepts his alien authority when it comes to the ‘removal of deadly tech’ side of their time together, there are revelations here that take Tegan’s character far beyond her TV persona, and there’s a moment of crisis for the Fifth Doctor when he realises a very particular truth about the Tegan he meets twenty years on. She’s just as stubborn as she used to be, but in some important ways, she’s outgrown the happily ever after notion of rescue by a knight errant, even an alien knight errant with the best intentions. Life has happened to Tegan, and through the events of The Gathering, she determines to grab it more firmly by the lapels and take it on – but she won’t take an easy way out of her troubles offered to her by the alien in the cricketing flannels and the decorative vegetable. The ending to which their strong personalities drive them in this story is more fully realised than the running-off which saw them part on TV, more grown-up, more considered and more implacable. Whether it’s more gentle and friendly depends on how you read it, but this is a staggering end to the story of Tegan and the Doctor  - or at least it would have been, had Janet Fielding not enjoyed the experience so much that the ‘younger’ version of her character rejoined the Tardis for more adventures.

Ultimately, whether The Gathering now fits in the story of Tegan and the Fifth Doctor is highly debatable – and we’re fans, there’s ultimately nothing we like more than to settle down with a cup of tea, a plate of biscuits and a point of canon-contention, so it gives us that opportunity. Whether it’s ‘real’ within the canon or not though, The Gathering gives you a reunion story between Tegan and the Fifth Doctor which compromises not even slightly on their personalities, makes you sit up and take notice of what you’re being served, and appreciate the more grown-up, realistic tone than we’re used to in the vast majority of our favourite science fantasy’s stories.

Straighten up your spine, just possibly bring your hankie along, and tackle The Gathering today – you’ll never look at Tegan and the Fifth Doctor in quite the same way again.

Who Reviews Black Orchid by Matt Rabjohns

"He won't harm her, he loves Ann!"

"And what do you think he will do when he realises, he has the wrong girl?!!"

Black Orchid is a small two-part oddity. But that is not in any way a downer on the massive amount of charm and pathos that get crammed into this delightful and yet tragic tale. What I mean by oddity is the fact that this story is not easily classifiable. An historic romp is not exactly correct, as romp implies some kind of good humour along the way, and actually Black Orchid is serious to a tee. And this is the first time in the shows history that the historical setting is not central to the story line, and no major historical happening surrounds the story either, which far from being dull is actually a nice touch and gives Black Orchid that totally standalone story feel.

What it has is Sarah Sutton getting to have a story where she is the focus. For a fan of Sarah's such as I, it is a delight to see her get a decent story for once. Sarah is one of the actresses you never hear many fans talking about, or I at least have never ever heard many people talking about the kind orphan Trakenite often. Sarah is though, a wonderful actress, and Nyssa never comes over as anything other than a wonderful, spirited and dependable character in Nyssa. And not only that, but a nice, charming character too. That she is so nice after her being an orphan and having lost her home world is another pointer to how great it is that she has not been turned into a stone by the fact. Her compassion and concern are wonderful to see in a character, and distinctly rare, one finds. It is wonderful to see her turn as Ann Talbot. She is very different to Nyssa. She is playful, but also very easily frightened as she is caught up in events as they quickly progress. Her scenes with Nyssa where they play with their identical costumes is mischievous and great fun.

There is just so much that is so rich and good in Black Orchid. It is for one a breather from the harder sci fi stories set around. It is amazingly designed too; the period costume is sumptuous and makes the show sparkle wonderfully well.

Then there is the absolutely first-class cast. Ron Jones may never be the most well remembered of Doctor Who directors, but here at least he does a fantastic job of directing a sublimely picked cast. Barbara Murray for instance as Lady Cranleigh is wonderfully two faced and hard. Lady Cranleigh's treatment of her disfigured son George is absolutely abysmal and shocking. Keeping a man, no matter how disfigured he may be in the mind or the body, hidden away and kept from people is always a recipe for severe unpleasantness and fallout.

Michael Cochrane is wonderful as Lord Cranleigh. And for once it is nice to see a Lord presented as being reasonable and sociable, and not overtly aloof and condescending. Indeed, before he suspects the Doctor of murder, he is elated to see just how formidable the Doctor's turn as cricketer is, almost making his team's score "respectable" after coming back from an almost certain thrashing.

Gareth Milne is absolutely stunning as George. That he kills three people is of course horrendous and wrong, but one can’t help but feel very sympathetic towards his tragic character. His make up is absolutely convincing, and his acting is even more wonderful. That he meets with such a shattering, and accidental, end aboard a rooftop is so gutting and gives the story a truly sombre finale indeed.

The cast is also bolstered no end by the excellent portrayal of Robert Muir by the ever-reliable Moray Watson. His police man is not the usual "Dr Who Dim wit yokel police man" act. He's given a great character and he shines in this story. That he is displayed as an approachable and agreeable man should be seen as a credit to the force, even if it is only in a fictional story.

Janet Fielding gets to show that she is not totally disastrous when it comes to dancing the Charleston, in fact she is pretty good. Adric of course is simply flat footed so he of course contends himself with the food instead! That the TARDIS team are for the most part of the opening episode seen to be unwinding and at ease is delightful to watch. Hardly ever do we get scenes of the TARDIS crew totally safe and at ease and getting to enjoy a break. And Black Orchid part one is a wonderful and relaxing, but still engaging break from the horrors soon about to come afterwards! But then with part two comes the murder mystery and of course the Doctor has to be blamed for it for a while. But this story is so wonderfully brought to life but such an exquisite cast that this story just can’t be accused of being boring or mundane.

From Black Orchid one can take away the feeling that this is rather unfolding like an Agatha Christie tale. It has so much of the tone and feel of an Agatha tone that one could easily mistake this story for being penned by her. 

Above all else Black Orchid is charming, distinctive and beautifully shot. The period feel is exceptionally well achieved. The main cast are all sublime. Peter Davison has already completely found his feet as the Fifth Doctor and it radiates from him like sunlight. His more human and open Doctor is well suited to a story of this type. It is actually a shame we never got a few more of these totally historical period pieces again after this in the show's original series. Well, one has to be glad that at least we have one treasure in that ilk to enjoy whenever we want to.

Terrence Dudley is an underrated writer. He had some really decent characters and some wonderful storylines which is more than just evident in Black Orchid. This is definitively the best of his three stories for the show though, that much has to be said. Yet another fine example of how unpredictable and different the show can be when it wants to be. There is nothing else quite like Black Orchid in the history of the programme. It is wonderfully and touchingly unique and deserves to be far better remembered that it often is.

Who Reviews Snakedance by Matt Rabjohns

The imaginative and fresh ideas that Christopher Bailey brought to the show when he wrote Kinda was amazing. The Mara was an extremely sinister and palpable menace, the embodiment of Dukkha especially was superbly effective in scaring the hell out of me when I was a young boy. I felt when watching Kinda that this is just begging for a sequel, and not just that, but a good sequel too. And I was delighted to find not soon afterward that there was indeed another Peter Davison story with the imaginative force from the dark places of the inside, and this time it would be taking the Mara back to its home planet and its roots.

Now I am almost certain that in many ways Snakedance is even better than Kinda, at least for me. The first major improvement of course is the look of the final serpent in part four. It is still not absolutely brilliant, but it is a whole lot more convincing than the decidedly awful realisation of the serpent in Kinda.

The spotlight given to Tegan in these two stories gives Janet Fielding the space to act better than she does in all her other Doctor Who appearances. In Kinda we saw her have a few moments possessed by the evil of the Mara, but this was really only a delicious little snippet. Here in Snakedance we are treated to the best of her controlled malevolence, and Janet is brilliant to watch. From her surprisingly catty GO AWAY! To her absolutely chilling performance whilst in the Fortune Tellers booth, Janet proves her mettle as one of the finest actresses ever at conveying the core of being possessed by a malign will. In the entire history of the show the only other woman to come close to matching Janet for palpability in the possession department is Elisabeth Sladen. I've never been so unnerved by a good girl going bad as I was when watching Janet in Snakedance. She truly steals the show with a brilliant and highly nuanced performance of demonic take over.

It is good to see a young Martin Clunes, and it’s a relief he does not play the show for laughs like something out of Men Behaving Badly. In fact, he plays the role of Lon totally straight and gives quite the performance, and he works brilliantly besides Janet Fielding throughout this story.

It is also a wonderful piece of TV to see no other than Brian Miller, aka LIs Sladen's husband, as the hapless stall owner Dugdale. He puts in a brilliant performance that is credible and it’s sad when he gets his mind burn out by the Mara so soon in the story.

What is also very good about this story is that it is not resolved in the typical way. Several Doctor Who stories villains are defeated by strong action. But that is not the case with this story. Here the Manifestation of the Mara is only defeated by the Doctor using the skills of the Snakedancer Dojjen to locate the still point within himself. So, a clean mind free of hate and misery and lies is what puts the refined evil of the Mara in its place.

Another point of congratulation has to be for the way this story embroils several differing nods to differing belief systems, particular Buddhist and Christian themes, without mocking those belief systems at all. All too often on TV shows we see plenty of belief systems being ridiculed or made fun of, and this is nothing but a turn off for me. I was always brought up to respect the beliefs and cultures of others, and it is a real decent change to see some different cultural references being used in Doctor Who without them being a source of jokes and disrespect. In fact, the subtle way the themes come over is to the story's credit no end. Most people don’t like being preached at, but when good moral and decent points are made in a programme it’s always a plus point for me.

Every character in this story is extremely well refined and characterised. We have the niave but charming Lady Tanha, played with charm by Colette O'Neil. Then we also have the added plus point of John Carson appearing as the aloof and brash Ambril. A classic scene is when he realises that the sixth face of delusion is his own whilst trying on a superbly realised headdress, and he barks at the Doctor to get out for him pointing this out to him! Then we have the reasonable and approachable Jonathon Morris as Chela, who works well with the Doctor and Nyssa in their quest to rid Manussa of the plague of the Mara.

Peter Davison is at the top of his game. And it's a refreshing change to see intelligence and thought being used to defeat a menace rather than outright fights and action. The variety of Doctor Who stories always has to be applauded. Never once did the show stagnate in the classic run, it’s part of the reason why the show has lasted as long as it has.

And one must never forget the presence of Nyssa. It’s so good that Sarah Sutton here gets to wear a different costume for once other than her normal trakenite garb. She looks pretty and charming in her multicoloured skirt and top here, and she is always wonderful as the character of Nyssa too.

Snakedance is one of the series finest presentations of a sequel, it is nothing like its predecessor Kinda, and it in fact achieves every goal that a decent sequel should have. It builds upon the foundation of Kinda, and honestly grows it so well. Kinda was excellent enough on its own, but the sequel for me is even stronger. Could we ever be in for a third story to make up a trilogy? One feels the Mara is a menace that could easily be expanded upon even more. But if we are to only have Kinda and Snakedance, then one seriously can have no complaints at all. The Mara really encapsulates well the darkness of the mind. The Mara stories stand as two incredibly strong Peter Davison shows, perhaps maybe even the cream of his era even, if it just be for their uniqueness and use of more than just overblown action to tell a very intelligent and gripping and very well paced four episodes of Doctor Who.

I have no idea why Christopher Bailey never appeared again after this story. He had such a fertile and rich way of thinking. He stands as a brilliantly fresh and creative writer and Doctor Who could have taken more stories from him. Just the kind of writer that brings nothing but benefits to the wonderful show....