Who Reviews The Invisible Enemy by Matt Rabjohns

Everyone has a Doctor Who guilty pleasure story, a story that maybe hasn't been well received by many other reviewers over the years. And for me one of my very favourite of such stories is definitely The Invisible Enemy. ​

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First let me get over the bad points of the story first. There's a very suspect scene of Professor Marius injecting the Doctor with the miniature forms of the Doctor and Leela and it’s as clear as day that there is nothing in the syringe at all. Not a very clever scene showing someone being injected with nothing but air. Considering kids may copy what they see on screen as they often do! Yes, the Doctor may be a time lord but I'm sure even he would not like to have an embolism or something brought on by air in his alien blood! ​

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The second niggle is that for part three we are informed that the clone lives for no more than ten or so minutes yet the clones of the Doctor and Leela manage to survive for the entire episode! Maybe ten minutes are a lot longer measurement of time in the far future or something?! But this for me is where the flaws with the story end and otherwise the story is extremely good and interesting and has a mad and brilliant looking villain. (Also, there are a few awfully concealed breaks in the wall that are most blatantly displayed just before they are called to fall and smash to the floor which does look a little silly. But I myself was never ever bothered by these flimsier effects. I concentrate more on the story). ​

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John Leeson makes his awesome debut as K9 too. K9 of course would go on to become one of the shows very most loved characters, especially by younger members of the viewing audience and I must say i think he was the perfect choice to voice the metal pooch. Though he doesn't sound a bit clunky in some scenes as his motors did have the tendency to interfere with the camera signals but its brilliant that the director overcame this obstacle so we could enjoy the debut of one of the coolest pooches in this universe. ​

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And not only does John voice K9 but he also voices the malevolent swarm. An intelligent and driven alien virus with a mean attitude. Some people may poke serious fun at the somewhat prawn look of the Virus when it is increased to life size by Professor Marius, but I think it looks an awesomely designed malignancy indeed. I find it amusing that the Virus needs human assistance to move once it is full sized. I also love the way the Doctor insults the creature when he says That Pathetic Crustacean. The effects of the viral take over look memorable and very coolly done too. I think it’s a great scripting point that Leela is immune to the effects of the virus and thus is partly the answer as to how to defeat it. ​

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Michael Sheard makes one of his brilliant performances, this time as Supervisor Lowe. He's introduced as a caring and concerned man who is then lost to the machinations of the Virus. Michael always was a superb actor and gave his all to every role he had on the show, and the Invisible Enemy is no exception. ​

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Scenes of the Virus's eggs spawning and beginning to reproduce on the asteroid Titan Base too are extremely well shot. The pulsating eggs look alive and wobble superbly as if the young are struggling to break through. And also, the model work on this story is truly second to none. There are many fantastic space ship model shots and these effects are superbly achieved and gives the story more of a realistic feel of being in deep space than many other stories set in space would deliver. ​

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Tom Baker is on brilliant form in this story. Tom is an actor who is always very unnerving when portraying the Doctor possessed and in trouble. The glare he gives people when he is overtaken suitably gave me the chills when I was young and first saw this brilliant story. If ever there was an incarnation of the Doctor you could easily imagine being forced over to the dark side, then it has to be Tom. Superb acting throughout this story that bolsters it no end. Yet another reiteration of just how perfectly cast he was as the fourth incarnation of the Time Lord. ​

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Louise Jameson is very strong as warrior of the Sevateem Leela too. Great to see a female character given guts and determination and therefore she is a serious force to be reckoned with. It’s a shame for me that Louise Jameson didn't stay in the role a little longer than she did. She became the noble savage and made her one of the very best characters in the whole era of the show. Lots of people declare her predecessor Elisabeth Sladen as one of the best ever friends of the Doctor, but I think Leela too is on that same level and it’s great to see her learn and develop as a character over her nine screen adventures. If only it could have been 18 adventures instead. Louise is a stunning and extremely capable actress indeed. ​

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Frederick Jaeger too has a very interesting fake German accent that somehow just makes Professor Marius very amusing to watch. I like this performance of his just as much as his earlier appearances in the series too. I love his perfectly scripted goodbye to K9. "I only hope he's TARDIS trained!" is a wonderful way to end the story as he sniffs back tears and K9 is free to join the Doctor and Leela on their travels. ​

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The Invisible Enemy never seems to be particularly fondly remembered and I for one yet again raise the cry of not knowing quite why. Bob Baker and Dave Martin's script is witty and fast paced, injected with enough strong incident and sublime model work to make it stick in the mind. The Nucleus of the Swarm deserved to be come back to the show too I feel. (It has now returned in the Big Finish audio drama Revenge of the Swarm which Id also greatly recommend as a superb listen and follow on!) ​

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The Invisible Enemy is nothing more than solid and beefy and highly entertaining sci fi. The constant inventiveness of the show helped insure for me that Doctor Who remains the best sci fi series to ever be shown on British TV, and I would definitely announce that this story is a very worthy and memorable addition to the canon and does not deserve to be as forgotten and overlooked as it often seems to be.

Who Reviews The Android Invasion by Matt Rabjohns

If The Android Invasion was the weak point of Season 13 in the original series then it’s plain to see just how strong the show was at that time. There was a real increase in the horror overtones and Tom Baker and Liz Sladen were at the height of their powers as the dynamic Time travelling duo set against the evils of the universe. And The Android Invasion isn't really that bad at all, it just has a few scripting blunders that mar the overall effect which is still one of a very solid and enjoyable story with many superb moments along the way. ​

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Let’s do what I always do and get the bad points out of the way first. The Guy Crayford not having a bad eye revelation is rather silly and pathetic. How could one not realise he had two eyes, even if he were seriously brainwashed?! This is laugh out loud blundering and it’s a shame because it otherwise ruins a strong and memorable ending to a very good story. So, we're meant to swallow the notion that he never washed underneath his eye patch? 

What a load of nonsense! ​

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Philip Hinchcliffe has stated he was never pleased with the look of the Kraals as well. I don't actually think they are that bad myself. The space pig/rhino look works well although the mask doesn't look as flexible or believable as many other monster designs of this period. But they not terrible and Styggron is a mean little piece of work. Its great hearing Doctor Who stalwart Roy Skelton voicing Chedaki too. ​

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Despite the poor script blemish to end his involvement in the story, Milton Johns is sublime in the role of Guy Crayford. He's a typical slimy little idiot but with a believable streak of naivete and weakness going through him. ​

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It is rather obvious too that Tom Baker had a sore throat during this story as his voice is rather rough and gruffly edged, and I expect the stunt of him hiding in the river in the woods did little to alleviate his sore throat too! Although this is a brilliant scene and well shot. And both he and Liz Sladen are creepsville as their android duplicates. Tom is so great at acting wicked and evil, and the shot of Sarah next to the TARDIS with the Android Doctor and the pod with Sarah's duplicate opening is a chilling scene that really unnerved me as a young boy. ​

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When Styggron is finally killed by the android replica of the Doctor his manky squished in head made me want to puke when I first observed it. Boy it was so gross that green muck coming out of the poor Kraal's bonce. Even my Dad Ian too said this scene made him feel nauseous when he watched it when it was shown. Looks like a mouldy load of scotch broth and man it is extremely graphically unpleasant indeed. I still cringe when I see this scene even now. ​

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Ah and the plot point of the Android Doctor killing Styggron too. When all the androids are frozen, I just think it’s obvious the Doctor reprogrammed it so it would no longer be affected by the radar beam so it could fool Styggron. I don't see any major plot hole here at all myself. ​

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The opening shot of the UNIT soldier moving jerkily through the woods is a classic opening scene and pure Terry Nation if ever we saw any. I always wince when he cuts his cheek on the sharp plastic wood of the fake trees. And the shots of him falling off the cliff and committing suicide too are very well done and stark.​

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The Androids themselves are a resonating success of design. And the cliffhanger of the fake Sarah's face falling off remain with me to this day as one of the truly memorable aspects of this story. A terrific cliffhanger indeed. The initial scenes of the empty Devesham and then the silent arrival of the strange villagers are also superbly directed and creepy scenes. ​

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And this story is also notable for its last major appearances of Ian Marter and John Levene as Harry and Benton. It’s sad that this story is their last because as a goodbye it really does neither character any true justice. But both Ian and John are superb yet again in their roles and its little wonder they are both such fondly remembered actors from the show. I actually think the decision to rest UNIT and Harry was one of Phil Hinchcliffe's very few mistakes during his time as producer. ​

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Terrance Dicks in his novel of this story tidy's up the ending considerably and irons out a few of the scripting errors too. But the Android Invasion still has far more good points to its credit than bad ones. The whole cast is extremely assured. Barry Letts direction is polished. Another favourite scene is when the Doctor jumps right from the roof of the centre only to be immediately surrounded by androids. A neat little trick in having their guns in their fingers too, I think. Makes for a memorable look. ​

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Its little wonder to see why the show was at the zenith of its popularity around this time. All the stories under the watchful eye of Robert Holmes script editing genius were something to remember and savour. There was a real dash of the macabre and the unnerving running through several stories. And the image of the Doctor tied to the village monument with a bomb next to him primed to go is yet another memorable image from this story. ​

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The Android Invasion is by no means perfect, but it holds its own against some fearsome story competition around it. Sandwiched between Pyramids of Mars and The Brain of Morbius it is still a sturdy and reliable effort and a very entertaining tale. The Kraals mad as a box of frog’s scheme to replace the earth's population with duplicates is laughably corny and crass, but I don't really give a fig. This doesn't stop the fact that this story is still yards and yards ahead of most Matt Smith episodes of the show at least. ​

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Definitely a memorable and effective piece of sci fi writing. Great to see something else other than Daleks in a story from Mr Nation too. He was a truly gifted and reliable writer and its little wonder he contributed so much to the show. Thanks, so much Terry for this superb story and all the other treasures you gave to us Doctor Who fans!

Who Reviews Scratchman by Tony J Fyler

Tony starts from Scratch.

Scratchman is a very unusual Doctor Who story. It’s been the stuff of legends for decades – a script for a movie version of Doctor Who, written by Fourth Doctor actor Tom Baker and Harry Sullivan actor, Ian Marter, in which the Doctor and his friends would encounter the ultimate evil: the Devil.

Now, over four decades and nine Doctors later, with help from author James Goss, Tom Baker has finally brought Scratchman to the world as a novel, and subsequently as an audiobook. It’s Tom Baker, writing his own Doctor, empowered with all the blending of Classic and New Who that you might expect since it comes to us in 2019. And then it’s read by Tom Baker mostly in the Fourth Doctor’s first person, in that voice that could ripen grapes.

In fact, that blending is one of the book’s chief attractions. While Baker and Goss deliver what for some is the absolute apex of Classic Who Tardis teams – the Fourth Doctor, Sarah-Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan – and deliver them faithfully, with, for instance, Harry Sullivan being loyal and decent and not really an imbecile at all, there’s also a very modern vibe about the way things are presented. In the Seventies, Doctor Who Versus The Devil would have been quite a Hammer Horror concept, but this is 2019 – the Doctor met the Beast in the Pit a couple of lifetimes ago, so there’s a rather more scientific atmosphere underpinning the ‘Devil’ of the piece here. Scratchman, or Scratch as the Doctor chummily refers to him, is a being from another universe, who rather thrives on the energy of terror, and who’s in the market for both a bridgehead, to allow him to pop over to our reality and up its fear factor, and an ambassador, for which position he’s more than happy to consider the Doctor, as one agent of chaos to another.

That said, there’s plenty of gothic horror here to keep those who love it happy – there are walking scarecrows (another element that’s been used on screen in New Who – Human Nature), who confer their scarecrowness by touch (as seen in The Empty Child), and the way their scenes are written spares little of the reader’s feelings. In one particular scarecrowifcation, you’ll feel your chest tighten as you positively yeeeearn to find out what happens next.

As well as keeping up a solid pseudo-scientific horror plot though, Scratchman is studded with moments that will make you punch the air and smile a beaming Tom Baker smile. There’s one Classic enemy featured heavily here, and, almost for story-convenient larks, we get to find out what their version of Hell would be. There’s the Doctor on trial by the Time Lords, as it would have been had it happened in the Fourth Doctor’s time. There are brief, pleasing cameos by a horde of other recognisable monsters, and a very cheeky, gorgeously daring not-quite cameo by a race from ‘a giant metal city, its occupants like tanks full of hate…’ – Ahem. Say no more, you might get sued. And there are also name and time-checks from other eras, too – at one point there’s a kind of replay of the bickering of The Three Doctors, only with the judgement of the Fourth thrown in. There’s a flash-forward to ‘the next one’ too, as the Cabbie of the Dead reassures the Doctor that, although he’s dead, life will go on. And oh my life – there’s a room into which Sarah-Jane wanders on board the Tardis that will absolutely break your heart and leave you sniffing.

And after a rollercoaster ride of ups, downs and literally sideways…es, (Did we mention the new look variant on the console room, and the Doctor’s conversation with his ship as he persuades her to go where no Tardis has gone before?), once evil has been revealed, and thwarted, and all in time for tea…there are the epilogues.

Most of all – oh, most of all – there are the epilogues. Three of them, each of which is more perfect than the last. There’s a moment when the Fourth Doctor sees his own future and comes to terms with it, which will make you cheer like a loon. There’s a memo to listeners from the Fourth Doctor, which sounds almost like a love letter from Tom Baker himself, more or less expressing the hope that he’ll be well thought of, not only for this adventure but for the way he lived the Doctor’s life, which will probably have you standing up through a haze of grateful tears, shouting ‘Yes! Oh, Doctor, of course, yes!’ And there’s even an epilogue from someone who’s not the Doctor, but who will have you sniffing into your hankies, or quite possibly bawling your eyes out.

Scratchman is a Doctor Who story that’s been decades coming to fruition. And when you hear it, you’ll be grateful that all the intervening time has allowed Doctor Who to evolve and become the thing it is today, because what you get is a Scratchman born in the Classic Seventies, and almost endlessly enriched by the New Who sensibilities that make the 21^st century show as fresh, as relevant and as real as the Seventies version was escapist and magical. Scratchman is literally the best of both eras, skilfully blended to please every palate.

And then of course, it’s read by Tom Baker.

Now that's both a great thing, and an exhausting thing. It's great because it's Tom Baker, and nearly nine hours of Tom Baker in your ears can never be a bad thing. His line readings are utterly unique and would occur to no other human being alive. There are intakes of breath, there are ad-libs, there are wild madman laughs thrown in like waves, there are ups and down and rolls into the most intense fruitiness, there are great soaring skyscapes of vocal crenellation which belong in the mouth of nobody else.

Perversely, that's what sometimes makes Scratchman a slightly exhausting listen. But you come to the end knowing nobody else would quite have been good enough. Would have been quite so perfect. Would have been, in a name, Tom Baker.

The audiobook version of Scratchman is guaranteed to make most Doctor Who fans weak at the knees, irrespective of whether they’ve been fans for one series or over fifty years. It's roaring and sprawling and gothic and dark, with a central opponent who's half Lord of Darkness, half used car salesman, all totally workable on the TV screen of your imagination. It's both epic and intimate, both universe-threatening and personal. It’s gorgeously studded with treats all along the way, and it's quite capable of putting a little something in your eye.

You're going to want to listen to this one. Take occasional breaks, or the headiness of Tom Baker's performance will make you drunk like rich red wine, but always come back for more till the very end - like a Marvel movie, it's worth it down to the very last syllable.

Big Finish Reviews+ The Syndicate Master Plan Vol 1 by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s getting a syndicate together.

As universal legend Tom Baker turns 85, it’s time to take your unfeasibly long scarves out of mothballs and wrap ’em round your necks. The Fourth Doctor is back, and it’s 1978 all over again – only better. Less Yorkshire Ripper. Less Margaret Thatcher. More Jane Slavin. Better.

If you’ve never encountered Jane Slavin before, you’re in for a treat.

Of course, if you have encountered Jane Slavin before, you’re still in for a treat, there’s just more chance that you’ll know it before we start.

Slavin plays the first brand spanking new Fourth Doctor companion Big Finish has created, Police Constable Ann Kelso, in this eighth series of Fourth Doctor stories, and she first encounters the Fourth Doctor in The Sinestran Kill by Andrew Smith.

Andrew Smith – as you probably already know – spent decades as a police officer between initially being a clever, inventive, philosophically interesting writer…and again being a clever, inventive, philosophically interesting writer. He also has form in introducing us to new Fourth Doctor companions, having been the writer who gave Adric his first – and probably, if we’re honest, finest - couple of hours in Full Circle.

For Kelso, Smith gives us a classic ‘The Doctor investigating an anomaly’ story that pays a degree of homage to Sixties and Seventies British police drama, before becoming a thing that’s pure Andrew Smith, unpeeling reality like layers as people and aliens turn out to be more than we – or even they - think they are.

Tom Baker gets more and more brightly luminous as his time with Big Finish goes on, and the cast here gives him the leeway to be the mercurial Fourth Doctor, while never underselling the reality of their characters’ lives. Listen out for Ewan Bailey and Glynis Barber as gang bosses Hugo and Kathy Blake particularly, but as is frequently the case in New Who, it’s the new companion actor who’s given most time and space to show us why both the actor and the character, deserve a place on board the Tardis. Slavin’s Kelso is practical, level-headed, not one to freak out in a bizarre alien crisis when people are swapping skins, chasing her through Scotland Yard or, for reasons of which they’re not entirely sure, turning out to be really keen to assassinate mild-mannered shop owners. Where Kelso comes in the pantheon of the Fourth Doctor’s friends, only time will tell, but it’s clear that Slavin and Baker have a tremendous friendly chemistry which translates to the drama and lets you easily accept PC Kelso as a fellow traveller in time and space. Above all, she comes across as being useful in the stories in this first set, as though, while the Doctor was off being all clever and smiley and ultimately saving everyone, you could stick with Kelso and she’d keep you alive.

Phil Mulryne’s Planet of the Drashigs is a simple, glorious joy ride. It’s Jurassic Park – with Drashigs. But Mulryne gives you your money’s worth of invention. We’re only familiar with the Drashigs from Carnival Of Monsters, where they were huge and crawly and with the heads of Hell’s Jack Russells – but just as in Jurassic Park, there wasn’t just one kind of big scaly bugger to run away from or be fascinated by, Mulryne invents a gorgeous array of Drashigs (really rather forcefully making the case for a TV re-do with 21^st century visuals) – there are the big scary swampy Drashigs we know and run from, but there are also (get this, it’s terrifying) albino, burrowing, take the legs out from under you Drashigs (surely the stuff of Lair of the White Drashig sequels?), and then there are the smaller, pack-hunting Emerald Drashigs – the velociraptors of the story – who are a bit too damned clever for your own good if you happen to be trapped in a reserve with them.

Phil Mulryne takes the terrifying prospect of a reserve full of multiple Drashig-types and adds even more layering though – it’s not just ‘Let’s run away from Drashigs for an hour.’ The Jurassic Park style disaster movie depends on the intellectual hubris of humanity, and with the Drashigs, Mulryne invents freely, giving us new reasons to be fascinated by the terrifying predators, and also adds a dimension that takes them beyond the howling nightmare they’ve previously been. Fenella Woolgar shines as Vanessa Seaborne, a lynchpin to the new dimension of the Drashigs, and listen out too for Lizzie Roper playing somewhat against vocal type as Trencher. There’s also a practically unrecognisable touch of audio-helper Dan Starkey here, adding a whole new string to his bow. Big Finish has a strong history of reinventing one-hit wonder TV monsters and villains and taking them forward in exciting ways, and with this story, Phil Mulryne writes himself into the pantheon as Drashig-Master. More, in future, would be really rather fun. After all, it’s not as though the Jurassic Park franchise stopped after a single outing, and with the new elements Mulryne brings to them here, there’s little reason why the Drashigs too couldn’t expand their place in the Doctor Who universe in some genuinely interesting ways.

Next up, Simon Barnard and Paul Morris give us a celebrity historical story that’s far more than the sum of its parts, The Enchantress of Numbers. When you learn that the most central of its parts is Ada Lovelace, mathematical genius and one of the world’s first computer programmers, it’s probably enough to tell you to strap in. There are all sorts of mad, wonderful, referential elements here, as well as a fundamental storyline that’s elegantly timey-wimey (imagine the Terminator doing advanced mathematics to save its world and you’re onto something), and yet at its core, heartbreakingly human. In terms of the story dynamics, it’s also a solid example of the ‘Doctor and Companion Do Upstairs Downstairs’ model, as the Doctor hobnobs with Ada on trips to the church to pay tribute to her father, (the sheer force of bad behaviour that was Lord Byron), and to the tavern to fleece the locals at cards, while Ann goes downstairs to investigate maids, butlers and secret tunnels that may or may not exist at any given time. There’s a chance the timey-wimey mathy-wathiness of the plot might slip by you towards the end, but that just means it repays a second listen, and it ends with a lovely moment of classic Tom Baker era fun, reminiscent of City of Death. For listeners who love their stories to drip with warm, delicate characterisation, Finty Williams’ Ada will probably make The Enchantress of Numbers the highlight of the set.

And Series 8 part 1 ends on a solidly retrospective note with The False Guardian by Guy Adams. The Doctor and Ann land in the grounds of exclusive spa-cum-asylum-cum-prison, tangle with Varga plants (Oh yes, nostalgia-fans, this has your name written all over it), and meet a patient named Nigel Colloon who thinks he’s someone else entirely. The creepiness factor in this story is high, and there are dark deeds behind the hot stone massages. Kelso gets to show off her rather-more-than-beat-cop analytical and sneakiness skills as she goes wandering purposefully off, and the story ends on a mid-season cliff-hanger which both raises the nostalgia factor three more notches and begins to make you wonder about the whole ‘Syndicate Master Plan’ sub-title of the series. What’s more, John Shrapnel plays Colloon – even if you can’t immediately place his face, two or three words of ‘that voice’ and you’ll know who he is and be more than happy to spend an adventure in his company.

The Series 8A box set is a must-get audio because Tom Baker remains a solidly quintessential Doctor, seeming if anything to get better as he ages. Jane Slavin was born to be a companion to his Doctor and Ann Kelso manages to show us lots of fun, sensible companion action, while seeming like there’s still lots we want to get to know about her. And the writers here have given us a smorgasbord of Who-styles – from Smith’s alien gang warfare hiding in plain sight through Mulryne’s Reinvention of the Drashigs and Barnard and Morris’ sensitive celebrity historical, to Adams’ update on some nostalgic notes set on a world of gruesome body horror and professional smiles. Everyone serves the work, and the work serves the legend of the Fourth Doctor, while introducing us to a great new companion who has more to give.

Who Reviews City of Death by "Razorglove" Fyler

When Doctor Who came back in 2005, many people asked many of the same questions. Would the sets be wobbly? No. Would the companions still be screaming girls? Not unless the situation really called for it. Would the Tardis still be a police box? Yes of course. What story from the past would be the keynote for the future? Well, City of Death, obviously.

City of Death, when it appeared in September 1979, was a thing of unparalleled style – perhaps fittingly for the first story in the show’s history to feature an overseas film shoot, and for one set in Paris, the fashion capital of the world. Having started out being called “A Gamble with Time”, and with quite big areas of difference in the script, it was eventually panel-beaten into shape by ‘David Agnew’ – a gestalt entity, the thirds of itself split between writer David Fisher, Script Editor Douglas Adams and Producer Graham Williams. Because his style went on to be recognised around the world for at least three generations, (and also because he would recycle bits of it for one of his novels) it’s easy to say that Adams’s footprints are all over the script – which is never, under any circumstances, a bad thing.

If you want to make Doctor Who into a heist movie, then this is how you do it (can someone pop a note through to Stephen Thompson?). You set it not in a great big outer space bank, but right here on Earth in a recognisable setting, where a suave aristocratic couple are using alien technology to plan the theft of the Mona Lisa.

You add a Doctor and his companion at the absolute peak not only of their on-screen relationship, but also, if you can, at the peak of their off-screen relationship too: Tom Baker and Lalla Ward here banter like a newly-married pair of honeymooners, and are each a match for the dynamics of the other’s performance (and who else, if we’re honest, can say they genuinely held their own in scenes with Tom Baker? Who can say he let them?)

And then, just when your audience thinks it’s nothing more than a jolly alien heist caper, you turn the crazy up to not just eleven, but thirteen.

The “prologue” of City of Death, to give it its due, does tell us almost everything we need to know. Scaroth of the Jagaroth, looking like a patch of something scraped off a beach and poured into a flight suit, sits in his bizarrely-shaped spaceship, and accidentally blows himself to bits. The tonal shift from such hardcore sci-fi to the gibbering of the Doctor and Romana is achieved in one short panning shot, and there they are, on the Eiffel Tower, Romana in her school uniform (something decidedly for the dads, despite Lalla’s assertion that it would help children feel better about wearing their own uniforms). They banter and we follow them to a café, where a time slip shakes them up. Ohhhh, did we not mention that? The alien tech-using art-stealing aristocrat? He’s also doing time experiments down in his cellar. As you do…

Despite the time-slip, the Doctor decides they’re on holiday, and they go to view the Mona Lisa, which despite not having any eyebrows is, as the Doctor insists, one of the finest artworks in the universe. After another time-slip, the Doctor falls into the lap of a beautiful woman (probably), the Countess Scarlioni (Catherine Schnell, here Sophia Lorening for all she’s worth), and attracts the attention of English thumper-of-things and alleged detective, Duggan. And so the knockabout fun really begins. The Doctor steals the Countess’s alien tech – a bracelet that scans the defences they will need to overcome to steal the Mona Lisa – meaning Duggan gets interested in what he thinks is the Doctor’s ruse. The Countess, or more specifically her husband, Count Scarlioni, sends a squad of rent-a-goons to get the bracelet back, and locks our heroes in the cellar. Episode 1 ends with the Count, alone, staring into the mirror and then, for apparently no reason at all, tearing his own face off to reveal Old Seaweed-Features himself – Scaroth of the Exploding Spaceship.

While a great cliffhanger, it does rather boggle the mind. Not only does it mean that an alien actually wants to steal the Mona Lisa; it seems to mean that an alien we’ve seen blown to smithereens…wants to steal the Mona Lisa.

Meanwhile, in the cellar, the time experiments make solid progress – renowned expert in time (if not perhaps in accents) Theodore Nikolai Kerensky is busy turning eggs into chickens and back again (Well, everyone needs a hobby). So – alien art heist by exploded seaweed-faced monsters in the drawing room, world food shortage-beating time experiments in the cellar. Everyone clear? It’s like Upstairs, Downstairs written at a sci-fi convention, by people with access to way too much wine.

What’s missing from all this? How about a secret chamber that’s been bricked up for centuries? No problem - Romana spots a size difference in the downstairs rooms, and boom, there’s a secret chamber that’s been bricked up for centuries.

Now…you remember we mentioned the crazy being turned up to 13? Well, this is the point at which it reaches at least 11. The bricked-up chamber appears to contain…

Mona Lisas. Six Mona Lisas. So – just in case you’re falling behind, a seaweed-faced alien who exploded in scene one has a bricked-up cellar chamber with six Mona Lisas in it, and it using alien tech to help him steal a seventh – the one in the Louvre. Enter Duggan with a handy bit of exposition, and a chunk of plot that could have been lifted directly from a Sherlock Holmes story – there are seven criminal art collectors around the world, each of whom would pay a kingpin’s ransom to have the Mona Lisa in their private collection…but only if they believed it was the one and only – the one hanging in the Louvre. So, that explains why the Count needs to steal the painting. What it doesn’t explain is how he ends up with six in the cellar, all of which, according to the Doctor, are genuine – or, come to that, how he knows they’ll be there so he needs to steal the seventh.

That’ll be that “turn the crazy up to 13” moment we were talking about. Turns out Scaroth didn’t die in the explosion we saw at the start of the story. No, he was “splintered”, so there are a bunch of incarnations of him, connected but incomplete, scattered throughout Earth’s history, all working to advance human civilisation, to the point where the Count-incarnation, the last, latest one, has the equipment to perform rudimentary time travel experiments in 1979. Now…here’s technically also where the wheels come off the story. The seven Mona Lisas and their subsequent sale are all to fund time travel experiments in 1979, along with a bunch of Guttenberg Bibles, original Shakespeare folios and so on. What you have to ask is, with foreknowledge through his selves, is getting seven Mona Lisas painted really the most effective way this alien can think of to accelerate human technological development? Bear in mind that he has access to the greatest minds of Ancient Egypt, of Rome, of the Renaissance. He has access to Galileo, to Copernicus, Newton, to – let’s absolutely not forget – Leonardo DaVinci! But never mind about the engineering, Leo, you knock up a bunch of paintings, that’ll do nicely. So technically the plot makes no sense at all, but it’s delivered with such style, such grace, such pace that it really doesn’t matter that much. (Interestingly – and perhaps a little sadly, there’s no mention of Scaroth’s work with the Silurians, and how that presumably went extraordinarily pear-shaped when the Moon arrived and they all went underground. Fans may like to imagine the Silurian-Scaroth, as he’s forced into hibernation along with the rest of the species, muttering “Rassen-frassen stupid reptiles, all that work for nothing…”)

A quick hop back in time for the Doctor to write “This Is A Fake” on the six Mona Lisa canvases in felt tip and the art heist plot is foiled. But no matter – because the Count has persuaded Romana to help him. Kerensky’s experiment created a separate time field, but no-one could move from one universe to the other without a field interface stabiliser. Romana obligingly builds him one, only to belatedly realise what Scaroth’s actual plan is. He doesn’t just want to unite himself into one fully-functional Jagaroth again. He wants to go back in time and stop himself pressing the button that triggered the explosion in the first place. All very fine and noble, except the explosion is what started the development of life on the planet, so if he succeeds, we’re all doomed never to have existed.

Dilemmas, dilemmas.

What you need in situations like this of course, is a handy detective who likes to thump things. Duggan travels back to primordial Earth with the Time Lords, lamps the lantern-jawed Jagaroth and saves the course of history as we know it. Good old Thumper Duggan.

And so, bar a timeless cameo from John Cleese and Eleanor Bron, finally answering the question “The Tardis – fantastic dimensionally transcendental time machine, yes, but is it art?”, we leave the City of Death behind. But given it actually makes staggeringly little sense, why has it so often been cited as the story with the tone that re-launched Doctor Who to greater and greater triumphs in the New Who era?

Perhaps because if you look at it really hard, you see the fundamental components for a successful 21^st century show. The Doctor and his companion are equals here in a way they had seldom been (and indeed would seldom be again) in the Classic show – each bringing their own life, their own personality to the relationship in equal measure. The villain, Scaroth, played with his usual mastery by classically-trained stage actor Julian Glover, for the most part mixes charm, nous and a worldly humour – “My dear, no-one could be as stupid as he seems,” – with a fundamental brutality that quite takes the breath away (his response to the idea of wiping out all life on the planet is simply that he understands what will happen – “and I don’t care one jot”). The scale of the show feels bigger and better than the endless gravel-quarries of the majority of 70s Who, and the performances, the dialogue, and the deliciously bonkers plot all match the effervescence of the location. The characters may be living in a world of madness, but the dialogue they’re given makes them feel like real people. And City of Death has a firm, firm grip on its tone from start to finish. In this, more than in anything else, it maps out the 21^st century future of the show. There’s plenty of running around, a bit of filler and a great deal of banter, but the tone of this story is absolutely identifiable from scenes one and two, and it just intensifies from there, in a series before the words “tone meeting” were ever uttered. In essence, 1979 may be a table wine year in the Doctor’s judgment, but City of Death is a vintage champagne of a story – bright, bubbly, utterly celebratory and never failing to bring a smile to the lips of anyone who drinks it. What City of Death has, that, for instance, would not really be there for several seasons after Adams left the show to be replaced as Script Editor by the High Priest of Taking Life Seriously, Christopher H Bidmead, is a bouquet, a joi de vivre, that when it came to re-inventing the show for a 21^st century audience, was absolutely the note to hit. The sense of a universe of possibilities, of mad and wonderful diversity, a universe in which it could make some sort of sense for a time-split gestalt entity to be stealing the Mona Lisa to fund time experiments, was exactly the sense the revived show would need to get away with “lots of planets having a North” and giant green farting aliens in body-suits that zipped around the forehead. The chatty Doctor of City of Death is essentially a template for the rent-a-gob charm of the Tenth incarnation, and the equality of the Doctor and his companion in City of Death would be absolutely vital to attracting a young modern female audience when the show came storming back. It’s a load of barmy, chatty sci-fi fun that never disappoints – what better tone could there be for modern Doctor Who?

News Happy Birthday Tom Baker

Happy Birthday Tom Baker

Born on this day in 1934, Tom is known to many of us as the 4^th incarnation of the Time Lord we know as The Doctor which he played from 1974 to 1981. Tom has also played other characters in other programmes such as in Monarch of the Glen as Hector’s brother Donald McDonald, and has provided the voice over in ‘Little Britain.’

Tom’s list of credits extend from 1968 to present, he has a wonderful voice that was voted 4^th most recognisable in a poll back in 2005, the Queen taking first, and Prime Ministers Blair and Thatcher taking 2^nd and 3^rd place.

Tom has also reprised his role as the 4^th Doctor in three series of audio adventures for BBC Audiobooks: Hornet’s Nest, Demon Quest and Serpents Crest, with a new series of Doctor Who adventures with Big Finish released in 2013.

Happy Birthday Tom you celebrate your birthday with four broadcasted episodes of Doctor Who.

Enemy of the World (Season 5) Episode 5 of 6 in 1968

Starring Patrick Troughton,Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling.

Australia in the near future, dictator Salamander who is the spitting image of the 2^nd Doctor has insane plans to rule the world. 

The Three Doctors (Season 10) Episode 4 of 4 in 1973, saw William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton reprise their roles to feature in a story written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin with Jon Pertwee as the current Doctor. 

The Time Lords called upon the first two Doctors to aid the current one in stopping stellar engineer Omega – who is trapped in a black hole – from causing universal destruction.

The Awakening, Season 21, episode 2 in 1984 featured the Fifth Doctor Peter Davison, with companions Janet Fielding, Mark Strickson and Nicola Bryant.  Producer: John Nathan Turner

The Civil War re-enactment in Little Hodcombe becomes a little too real for the inhabitants.

And finally, The Ghosts of N-Space, Radio 2 drama, Episode 1 in 1996 saw a return of the 3^rd Doctor Jon Pertwee with companion Elizabeth Sladen as Sarah, and Nicholas Courtney as the Brig.  Writer: Barry Letts and Producer: Phil Clarke.

In Italy, the Doctor stops ghosts from invading the Earth.

Reference source:

Amazon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Baker

Doctor Who: Pocket Essential by Mark Campbell

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Awakening-Classic-Novels/dp/1408426722/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390220470&sr=1-1&keywords=Doctor+Who+The+Awakening

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-N-Space-Starring-Collection/dp/0563477016

The Mothership #SaveTheDay 4

#SaveTheDay

Four

©BBC Doctor Who 1963