Dragonfire

You don't know what a relief it is for me to have such a stimulating philosophical discussion.

The story that introduces Ace and dismisses Mel. I have been intrigued about this story as it has popped up a lot recently. Probably the most interesting discussion was an argument between two people as to whether it was the worst story of Season 24 or not. The argument there being that Time and the Rani had the good sense to know it was bad and that it had to be made in such a time crunch whereas Dragonfire had neither excuse. As I've never seen anything of this story apart from the scene of the Doctor dangling from his umbrella referenced in The Name of the Doctor, I'm going in to this one with a fairly open mind.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Mel travel to Iceworld, a layover station for interstellar travel. Stopping in to the local restaurant, they run into Sabalom Glizt, last seen in The Ultimate Foe. Glitz has just sold his crew to the head of the station, Mr. Kane, and is working on a new scheme. However, he restrained by the authorities and ordered to refund the money he was paid for a shoddy product delivery. Having lost the money he was paid in a game of cards, the authorities seize his ship, giving him 72 hours to repay what he owes.

Glitz asks the Doctor’s help as he has recently won a treasure map in another game of cards to a treasure located on Iceworld. At the mention of the treasure map, the waitress, a girl named Ace, pipes in and asks to come along, being familiar with Glitz already. The Doctor, his curiosity piqued by the legend of a dragon, agrees to help Glitz. Glitz however, demands the girls not come along. Ace fumes and returns to work. Mel agrees to stay behind.

Unknown to Glitz, he was allowed to win the map and it contains a tracking device put in my Mr. Kane. He purchased Glitz’s crew and is building an army of mercenaries that are placed in cryo-freeze. His deputy, Belazs, suggests that she might take Glizt’s ship but Kane reminds her of her obligation to him and gives and order to destroy the ship. However, Belazs later countermands that order while Kane is undergoing a freezing treatment.

Ace, still miffed at being left behind, pours a milkshake on a customer when the customer objects to the quality of the milkshake. She is immediately fired and Mel, who had tried to stick up for her, is thrown out as well. They return to Ace’s quarters where Mel learns that Ace is from Earth but was transported to Iceworld in a timestorm. Ace has also developed a more concentrated version of nitro-glycerin she calls Nitro-9. She takes Mel out to show its effects on an ice jam that the local authorities have yet to respond to.

Ace sets up to bottles of the Nitro-9 in front of the jam and blows it apart. As her action was unauthorized though, Belazs has her arrested and brought to Kane. Kane, impressed by her explosive work, offers her a chance to come work for him in a Faustian bargain. Mel urges Ace not to do it and Ace responds by slapping the marking coin away and threatening everyone with being blown up via her explosive. She and Mel run into the caves where they see a dragon-like creature approaching. The creature shoots a laser from it's eyes and the two women run off in the opposite direction.

Glitz and the Doctor progress steadily through Iceworld using the map. They pass various markers but become separated at one point. The Doctor, looking for Glitz off a ledge, attempts to climb down but loses his grip and slips down his umbrella, risking falling into the depths below. Glitz finds him hanging and helps him off by pulling him on to the narrow ledge below. Frustrated at his inability to find the treasure, Glitz offers the map to the Doctor in exchange for helping him to take back his ship. The Doctor reluctantly agrees.

The Doctor distracts the guard on Glitz's ship with a discussion on philosophy while Glitz sneaks aboard. However, Belazs is there waiting for him, having heard his conversation with the Doctor over the bugged map. She prepares to kill him but the Doctor comes aboard, distracting her enough for Glitz to knock the gun out of her hand. The two flee the ship, taking her gun with them. They end up running into the same creature Mel and Ace ran into and it too fires a bolt at them. They had back through a door which the creature cuts through. Glitz aims to shoot it, but the Doctor slaps the gun away from him, refusing to kill it. The creature then turns away and leaves them alone.

Kane, hearing of Glitz's attempt to leave, revives several members of his old crew and set them off to kill him. The zombified crew run into Ace and Mel, who are looking for the Doctor and Glitz. They run from them but Mel slips on the ice and hits her head on a set of stairs. Ace pulls the groggy Mel under the stairs to hide and the pursuing men pass them. The two women pause for a breather with Ace revealing that her real name is Dorothy.

Belazs, convinced by the Doctor during their conversation on Glitz's ship that Kane will never allow her to leave, convinces a fellow servant, Officer Kracauer, to try and kill Kane. Kracauer, using information given by Belazs, sneaks into Kane's chamber while he is in his freezing pod. Kracauer raises the overall temperature to above freezing. Kane emerges from his pod, agitated and unable to breathe. He sees the ice statue of his partner Xana melting and he attacks and kills Kracauer. He lowers the temperature of the room and begins to stabilize. He emerges from his chamber and kills Belazs for her treachery.

The Doctor and Glitz run into Mel and Ace in the corridors where they are attacked by one of Glitz's old crewmembers. The creature emerges and kills the crewman before he can kill them. They follow the creature down to the singing crystal room which is in fact a computerized archive. The creature activates the computer and the computer reveals that Kane is a criminal who was exiled to Iceworld for his crimes. He had an accomplice, Xana, who was killed in the final battle that captured Kane, hence his devotion to her statue. The Doctor realizes that the treasure is actually contained within the creature, which is something Kane cannot approach due to the heat it generates. The creature opens it's head, revealing a computer powered by the Dragonfire crystal, a powerful energy source.

Kane overhears them due to the bugged map and orders two of his guards to go kill the creature and bring back it's head. He also orders the rest of his guards to chase off the visitors to Iceworld and herd them on to Glitz's ship, the Nosfaratu.

The Doctor and the creature head deeper into the ice computer to consult a set of star charts while Glitz heads back to his ship to collect some explosives. Mel and Ace wait by the computer. Glitz is caught up in the rush of people driven out of Iceworld but is unable to get aboard his ship before it is sealed off. He watches as the ship takes off and then explodes.

The Doctor and the creature consult star charts but the charts are out of date and the Doctor decides to head back to the TARDIS. He and the creature are separated by the two guards looking for the creature. They ignore the Doctor and he heads back to collect Ace and Mel. Together they enter the TARDIS and the Doctor is further confused when his own star charts don't match the information given. The trio heads back to find the creature but Ace heads back to her own quarters to collect more Nitro-9. There she is captured by Kane.

Glitz heads back down and reunites with the Doctor. They discover that Ace is missing and that the creature has been killed by the guards, but they in turn were killed when the Dragonfire crystal discharged after they cut off the creature's head. They remove the crystal and hear Kane speaking to them over the speakers to bring the crystal where he will exchange Ace for it.

They meet Kane in his lair and make the exchange. Kane uses the Dragonfire crystal to supply power to the colony which is actually a spacecraft in disguise. He launches the ship and flies back to his home planet. However, the Doctor discloses that his home planet isn't there anymore. Their sun went supernova two thousand years ago. Kane, refusing to believe that his revenge will be unfulfilled, opens the shield window where he is caught in a blast of unfiltered sunlight, vaporizing him.

Glitz takes over the ship which he renames the Nosfaratu 2. Mel decides to leave the Doctor and instead travel around with Glitz, keeping him in line. She also suggests that the Doctor take Ace as a new companion. The Doctor offers and Ace readily agrees.

Analysis

I'm not going to lie, this story is deserving of the terrible reputation it has. The story had some potential in it's initial set up and even through the first couple of episodes, I could see some small good bits. But it all came crashing down in the end into a terrible hot mess.

There was some small amount of good. We had Ace introduced, although she wasn't that good in this story, but other writers did better with her so we'll give this story a little prop there. I did enjoy the Seventh Doctor in this story. He had some bad moments too, but his performance was still mostly enjoyable so he gets a small boost there. I enjoyed the performance of Belasz, who was fairly conniving as a secondary antagonist. Her performance was enjoyable. I will also give this story credit for at least giving all the information. In a number of Seventh Doctor stories, there are obvious cuts made that leave you confused as to what is going on. Here, you get the full story, shoddy as it may be, so there is nothing left unanswered and that is a point in this story's favor.

Unfortunately, that is where the good things end. Nearly everything else in this story is just bad. The scene wasn't bad, but it was a bit overlit so that instead of that icy, crystalline feel you get from Superman's Fortress of Solitude, you get a glassy or plastic-y feel to everything. It also didn't help that Sylvester McCoy was the only actor who seemed to be treating the set as if it were actually made of ice. You would see him pretend to slip and use his umbrella to steady himself in a way that was trying to sell the set. However, no one else did the same thing, so whatever illusion he was trying to foster went away quickly.

The acting performances of nearly everyone were pretty bad. Glitz was his usual roguish self, but without someone to play off of, he becomes a lot less charming and more of a dumb con-man. He was also given some pretty terrible expositional dialogue that the actor just couldn't make work. Instead of being fun comic relief, he was just a dumb bore.

Mel was also pretty bad. She was her usual perky self, which wasn't bad per se, but she had absolutely nothing to do and what little dialogue she was given was flat and uninteresting. Ace likewise was also rather badly written. It was very clear that she was written by someone who thinks they might know what teenagers sound and act like rather than someone who actually knows. Her performance wasn't horrendous, but it was all over the map in terms of emotions and attitude.

Her worst moment was when she was being held by Kane in exchange for the Dragonfire crystal. Here she begged for the Doctor to give in to Kane's demands as she was afraid to die. This is contrast not only to the fighter Ace we know in later stories, but also to the Ace we saw at the end of Episode One. There she stood up to Kane and fought back with perhaps false bravado, but still a form of bravado. The character we were shown in the earlier part of the story, would not have begged for her life and cowered in fear when threatened.

Kane himself wasn't overly terrible, but he was very one-dimensional. He also seemed rather incompetent as the story progressed. He enslaves others to build his army, but is nearly thwarted at several different occasions, mostly by his own henchmen. His only really good scene is when he kills Belasz and even there, I'd chalk that up to her performance rather than his as it was pretty obvious to what is coming. I would compare him to Rupert Everett's performance as Dr. Claw in the terrible Inspector Gadget movie. It is just that one-note.

Tone was a big problem for this story. The story couldn't fully decide if it was going to be a comedy or an action/horror story. Bits like the Doctor slipping around, Ace dumping a milkshake on her boss' head and the philosophy discussion with one of the Iceworld guards are clearly meant as comedy pieces. However, there are violent action scenes interspersed throughout: the fighting with the creature, Kane's freeze death touch and Kane's Raiders of the Lost Ark melting death. If that wasn't whiplash enough, you have the very odd cut scenes of the little girl in Episode Three where she is strolling around Iceworld acting like it's her plaything while death and destruction reign around. The acting of her mother is actually worse as supposedly Kane's men are killing everyone around and she stops Glitz at one point to mildly ask if he has seen her daughter, like she has been playing hide-and-seek too long. It is just a terrible performance and another indication that both the writer and director had no idea what tone they were supposed to use.

While on the subject of the child, I cannot figure out what the point of her was. She was used as the object that got Ace fired in Episode One as it was her mother that complained about the milkshakes. Fine. She randomly comes back in Episode Three and hides from Kane's men. Also fine, the producers could justify this by not even wanting to allude to the idea that a child died in the explosion of the Nosfaratu. But why keep cutting back to her throughout the rest of Episode Three? She could have been shown emerging from hiding after everything was over and it would have been a simple happy ending. Instead, she wanders through the corridors, almost getting shot by Kane's guard, finds her way into Kane's lair and puts her teddy to bed in Kane's freezing chamber; all for absolutely no point. Her wandering had no payoff except to cut into the run time and cut away from the main action. I can only think that she was someone's daughter who really wanted to be shown in the show because there is no other point that I can think of to having her in the story.

Another fault of this story was it's very haphazard use of metaphor. Ace being lifted from Perivale to Iceworld via a time storm and her own proper name of Dorothy is a not so subtle reference to The Wizard of Oz. Likewise, with a villain named Kane, his slaves take his frozen brand or "mark of Cain" if you prefer. Some small bits of metaphor are okay but generally it is nice to have a point behind it. The mark of Cain is fine although a bit over the top since it was pretty obvious Kane is the bad guy. The Wizard of Oz stuff though doesn't make a lot of sense though. Not only is it a pointless metaphor that doesn't really go anywhere, but it also creates a dumb situation of how Ace got to Iceworld in the first place. One that later writers went to try and explain and failed even then (in my opinion).

My final rant on this story is with Mel's leaving scene. I doubt that Ian Briggs was allowed to write that final scene, especially as there was a bit of internal debate on whether Ace or Ray from Delta and the Bannermen was going to succeed Mel as companion when the script was likely submitted. Andrew Cartmel was officially on as script editor, but given the rush of Season 24 and the significance of changing companions, I suspect that John Nathan Turner actually wrote this scene and boy does it show. Mel is given absolutely no reason to leave. They are not back on Earth and Mel has shown no inclination that she is tired of traveling with the Doctor. What's more, there is no hint that she has any chemistry or desire to interact with Glitz, either in this story or back in The Trial of a Timelord: The Ultimate Foe. She drops the idea of leaving like there was some monumental moment that occurred but nothing happened. It was the lamest excuse of writing out a companion that I've ever seen. Leela deciding to stay with Andred might be the dumbest companion departure, but at least there was a fig leaf of a romance that we apparently never saw. This was just Mel up and decided that it was time that she and the Doctor parted ways and that Ace should take her place. Ace coming along was fine but there was no reason the Doctor couldn't travel with both of them. Her leaving was not necessary.

The playing out of the scene was also pretty bad. Mel drops her bomb about leaving and that apparently flusters the Doctor to the point of nearly having a regeneration crisis. He babbles incoherently, flustered by Mel leaving and doesn't cotton on to the idea to ask Ace until Mel nearly kicks him in the butt. Then you have Ace's acting which is probably her worst portrayal of an eager teenager throughout the story. The Doctor recovers it a bit with his three rules bit but her reaction doesn't play right. It just made the last five minutes of the story absolutely painful to watch.

I'm sorely tempted to give this a score of 0. Nearly everything about it was terrible and whatever good in the story was displayed in Episodes One and Two, was washed completely away by the end of Episode Three. But I don't think I can go quite that harsh. Still, this is going to be near the bottom of my list. It is shoddily produced, poorly acting and badly written. What's more, unlike Time and the Rani, this was the last story of the season so there should have been time to do a little clean up here and there to make it at least marginally more palatable. I can't imagine voluntarily watching this one again and would not recommend it to anyone else to watch.

Overall personal score: 0.5 out of 5