Survival

I have to see a man about a cat.

Survival was the last story of the classic era. Although not the last filmed, it was selected to go last in the season and when word came down that the show was going to be shelved, the final coda of the Seventh Doctor was recorded and dubbed in as he and Ace walk away. I had been holding off on this one, even toying with the idea of making it the last classic era story I would watch. However, given that Rona Munro is coming back to write in Series 10, I thought it best to watch this prior to her return to the show to get a proper feel for her style.

Plot Summary

A young man is washing his mother's care in Ace's hometown of Perivale while being spied on by a black cat. Suddenly a large thing appears and the man tries to run away but is quickly overcome by the thing and he vanishes.

A few moments later, the Doctor and Ace arrive in the TARDIS. Ace had made an offhand comment about seeing some of her old friends and the Doctor indulged her. They head up to an old haunt of hers but find nothing, though the Doctor spies evidence of horses and a black cat observing them.

They then head to the local youth club, which also is missing several of things Ace remembered. Instead they find Sergeant Paterson teaching wrestling to a group of young men. After the lesson, Ace talks to him about some of her old friends. He doesn't know what happened to them but does recall Ace getting in trouble now and then. The Doctor is distracted once more by a presence of cats.

The Doctor and Ace head to the local food mart where the Doctor buys several tins of cat food. He also surprises a black cat that had been hiding among the cans. He warns the two shopkeepers to be on their toes. This is emphasized later as one of them heads to the back room to feed his own cat, Tiger, only to find the animal dead and having been chewed on.

Ace finally meets one of her old friends taking collections outside another store. She tells Ace that most of her old friends have gone. Some have gotten married or moved away but several have simply disappeared. Again, Ace attempts to engage the Doctor but he remains distracted. He finally sets up the cat food, hoping to attract the black cat that keeps crossing their path.

The black cat spies one of the young men who had been wrestling and marks him. A mysterious man in shadow can be seen looking through the cat's eyes and agrees. Again, a figure appears in front of the young man and when he tries to run, he is overtaken and vanishes.

Annoyed with the Doctor and depressed at the changes to her friends, Ace wanders up to the local park. There she finds the black cat and begins to stroke it. The cat leaps out of her grasp and in a flash a humanoid cheetah appears riding on horseback. The cheetah person chases Ace who ducks and hides in the various bits of playground equipment. She eventually breaks into the open but the cheetah person catches up to her and Ace suddenly finds herself in a wasteland on an alien planet.

Hearing Ace's cries, the Doctor comes running but finds Ace gone. He turns his attention back towards the black cat, whom he finally sees eating the cat food. Before he can grab him, Sargent Paterson grabs him and accuses him of being a nuisance. The cat runs off and the Doctor runs after it with Sargent Paterson following.

On the alien planet, Ace spies the body of the man who had been washing a car. She also sees the same cat person on a horse and tries to run. The cheetah person gives chase but is distracted by the young man who had been taken a few moments before Ace. He lunges out after the cheetah person but it knocks him cold. Satisfied with the hunt, it places the young man's body on the back of the horse and rides off. Ace runs in the opposite direction and spots an old friend of hers, Shreela. Shreela pulls her into the woods where she finds her hiding out with an old friend named Midge and another man named Derek.

The Doctor attempts to catch the cat again but again, Sargent Paterson thwarts him. This time they get aggressive towards each other and suddenly find themselves transported to the same alien world. Surrounded by cat people, they are herded towards a tent which the Doctor opens to find the Master welcoming him. The Master tries to spook the Doctor and Paterson into running. Paterson does but this just attracts the attention of the cheetah people who start toying with him. The Doctor grabs a control ball from the Master and distracts the cheetah people long enough to grab a horse, then Paterson and ride away.

Ace rallies her friends into setting up a trap to defend themselves from the cheetah people. One spots the trap and goes through but they find another trap triggered. However, it is the Doctor and Paterson who have sprung it. Banded together now, the Doctor opts to head towards a volcanic ridge nearby. He has observed that the planet is dying and the unstable area around the volcano will keep them from the cheetah people until they can figure how to get back to Earth.

They pass a group of cheetah people lounging in the sun. The Doctor warns them to move slowly and not engage as they will only attack if startled or very hungry. Unfortunately, one of the cheetah people returns from another expedition to Earth with a young man and this stirs up those that had been lounging. Adding to this, when confronted, Paterson and most of the men grab rocks and start flinging them at the cheetah people to drive them off. The Doctor implores them all to stand still and not move but no one listens to him.

The group gets separated with most of the group following Paterson around a ridge. Midge is saved when two cheetah people start fighting with each other over him and Ace runs near a lake after knocking one off a horse. Meanwhile, the Doctor is quietly approached by the Master. Observing the fight over Midge, the Master notes that there is a psychic connection between the cheetah people and the planet. As they fight, the destruction accelerates. He also reveals that the planet takes control the longer people are here. He reveals that he himself has begun to transform into a cat person and can see through the eyes of the regular cat which act as spotters.

The two cheetah people fight to exhaustion while Midge takes a fang from a skeleton and uses it to kill the exhausted cheetah people fighters. The Doctor finds Ace tending to one of the cheetah people who was felled by offering her water. The two make their way back to the others where they find Midge has become more aggressive and is attacking Derek. They stop his attack and the Doctor informs them that since the people here have the ability to jump to Earth to hunt and then bring prey back here, they must find a cheetah person to whom they can link to head back.

The Master overhears this and sets a trap for Midge. When he falls into it, his reaction to fight accelerates the transformation process. The Master ties a rope to him and they disappear as Midge jumps to Earth to hunt.

Paranoia spreads among the group as they fear who will be next. The Doctor tries to stop them from fighting which will advance the transformation when Ace points out an approaching cheetah person. As she turns back the Doctor notices that her eyes have gone yellow like the cheetah people. She runs off with the cheetah girl whose name is Karra. Karra tempts Ace to join in the hunt but the Doctor follows her and brings her back to herself.

With Ace in partial transformation, she is able to send them all back to Perivale. The other three disperse and Ace suggests they leave in the TARDIS but the Doctor is concerned about the Master and heads out after him, deciding to try Midge's house first.

The Master and Midge return to Midge's house where the Master partially suppresses his own transformation but encourages Midge's, furthering his control over Midge. They leave the apartment and first take a couple of motorcycles from a local dealership. They then head to the youth club where Midge and the Master exert control over the boys. They turn them on Paterson and kill him.

At Midge's house, they find a young girl crying over her cat that was killed by Midge. Anger builds in Ace, causing her to slip into cat mind briefly but it also allows her to see where the Master is. They see him assembling the boys on a ridge near the playground. Ace decides to fight but the Doctor warns her that if she does she will slip further into transformation. Instead, the Doctor hops on to a motorcycle left at their end and charges into Midge driving the other motorcycle.

The bikes crash and both are thrown clear. Midge dies of his injuries and the Master sets the other boys on Ace. Resisting the urge to fight back, she calls for help and Karra appears. She drives off the boys in fear but when she attacks the Master, he stabs her with the fang Midge had taken earlier. The Master runs off as the Doctor awakes from a pile of rubbish on which he landed.

Ace mourns for Karra as she turns back from cheetah form to her normal human visage. She then dies and the Doctor comforts Ace about her fate.

The Doctor catches up to the Master, attempting to enter the Doctor's TARDIS. They fight and are transported back to the cheetah person planet, which is now turning into a flaming ruin. The Doctor gets the upper hand on the Master and nearly kills him but he comes to his senses, refusing to fight. As he does, he is transported back to Earth alone.

The Doctor finds Ace again as one last cheetah person comes through. However this one disappears before a hunt can be initiated. The Doctor informs Ace that the planet has been consumed, though she will always carry a part of it in her. They head back to the TARDIS as the Doctor proclaims that there is more work to be done.

Analysis

I must confess that I was disappointed by Survival. I had heard that it was considered decent and not a bad story to go out on. But when watching it, I found it to be trying to hard to be meta while the same time being so shallow on story that the entire middle section felt like filler.

I thought the story began well with a lot of puns, mysterious events happening and a dark figure in the background, whom I already knew to be the Master. But once they got to the planet, the story stalled out. Aside from the exposition by the Master about the planet taking control of it's inhabitants, nothing really happens except a lot of run around. It almost felt like a middle episode of a six-part First Doctor story except that it constitutes one-third of the whole story. Things picked up a bit in Episode Three but even there, it was so unclear as to the purpose and why behind everything that it ultimately left more questions than answers.

The Doctor was pretty good in this as he had stepped back from his all-knowing persona a bit. I believe this story was the second one filmed and it is missing something from the Doctor and Ace interaction that you would expect from having gone through The Curse of Fenric and Ghost Light. Nevertheless, he is still entertaining, especially when he gets very focused on the cats in Episode One. There were two points that I didn't like though. The motorcycle jousting was just bizarre and the Doctor got a little melodramatic in his line delivery in his final fight with the Master. I thought those moments dragged his performance down a bit.

Ace wasn't bad but her delivery wasn't particularly well done overall. Having seen Ace do well in other stories, I'm going to chalk that one up to the thin script and a lack of direction. I get that Ace was supposed to be a bit mournful about the passage of time and the loss of old friends, but how that accelerated her transformation and caused her to bond with Karra was never properly fleshed out. I got the impression that it was unclear for Sophie Aldred as well as she seemed unsure of her style and delivery. It wasn't painfully bad, but for a story that should have centered so much on Ace, her lack of focus was very obvious and detrimental to the overall story.

I recall hearing some people say that they thought this was one of Anthony Ainley's best performances as the Master. I will say that it is probably his most restrained and I could see how that would benefit. But it's also one of the most useless. The Master directs the action in Episode One and gives the only exposition in Episode Two. But talk about control and attempting to force his will over the teenagers in Episode Three seemed jumbled and rather beneath him. In fact, the whole retreat to Earth seemed like a waste of the Master. Rather than confronting and thwarting the Doctor, he runs away and sets the laziest of traps for the Doctor, assuming his return. It just seemed like small potatoes for him. It also seems odd that if the Master wanted to fight and destroy the Doctor, why not engage him directly after the motorcycle crash when the Doctor was woozy? This outing of the Master just felt like a man who had no plan once he had escaped the planet and someone who should have fled the scene immediately once he was safe. I thought the performance by Ainley was fine, but overall an underwhelming performance by the Master.

Rather ironically, one of the things that gets derided the most about this story is something I actually liked: the cheetah people. I didn't really understand the planet turning humans into cheetahs but I thought the costumes were actually pretty good and they seemed like a genuine threat to the Doctor and the other humans. They managed to get a flavor of what a human transformed into a cat would be like but while still maintaining a level of humanity. Again, why cats, but of all the other issues with this story, that's one of the least bothersome.

I criticized the director earlier when it came to Ace but I should point out that the director did do a good job when it came to the environment. I thought there were some nice shots of the action and I thought they did a good job of making the quarry look like an alien planet, even though it is still a quarry. I suspect that the director was focused so much on get the look and action right that they didn't pay as much attention to the actors and the performances suffered. Most of the characters were a bit stiff. Outside of the Doctor and the Master, the only other one I thought that gave a pretty good performance was Paterson.

Paterson's performance overall was decent but I'm not quite sure what the point of his character was after the initial scene in the youth club. His set up lines about "survival of the fittest" played well with the overall theme but aside from causing a distraction to the Doctor when he tried to capture the Master's kitlin, he was a bit of a waste. He was subservient to the Doctor the whole time and did nothing except initiate the fighting when the milkman was brought back. That was something that could easily have been done by one of the others. I actually think the story would have played better if Paterson leaves the club in Episode One after talking all of his "survival of the fittest" bit and then comes in unphased only to be turned into a victim in Episode Three. As it stands, he is in shock and only a shell of his former self when attacked. That makes him easy prey in his scenario but it doesn't play up much for the strength of the Master's will. I think it would have worked better if he hadn't been in it so much, even though his performance was one of the better ones overall.

Overall, I can't say that I thought that this story was particularly good. The acting was ok but dipped into subpar on several occasions. The storyline was very thin and felt like it was trying to disguise it by being about more than it was. But it didn't explain the ideas it had and spent so much time with rather pointless running around instead of addressing the ideas. I have no problem with stories that want to be deep but if they do, they need to get into the them more and not just give lip service. Even doing something more direct like having the Master take on the Doctor in a more head-on fashion prior to the last two minutes of Episode Three would have been an improvement.

I would say that even if this story were great, it almost certainly couldn't be watched in isolation. There is too much build up and the story is aware of it's own weight and it's position. I don't think it needs to be saved as the true final story of a run, but it does need to be watched with awareness of the history of the show. It's definitely not a story to be watched by a new fan or in a casual manner. But given the quality of it, I probably wouldn't watch it again unless I was doing a marathon rewatch and needed that sense of closure.

Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5

Battlefield

Destroyer: Pitiful. Can this world do no better than you as a champion?
Brigadier: Probably. I just do the best I can

Battlefield is the Doctor Who take on the King Arthur legend. I've not heard much about it other than it is generally considered the weakest of four stories that make up Season 26, even by those that despise Ghost Light. I also know that there was an issue with production where this story was expanded from it's intended three episodes to four which has rather baffled people as again, Ghost Light would have benefited from expansion probably more than this story.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Ace receive a distress call in the TARDIS and materialize on Earth a few years beyond when Ace left. They hitch a ride from an archeologist named Peter Warmsly, who is following a UNIT truck on his way to his dig site. At the dig site, from the Arthurian period, the Doctor finds a UNIT nuclear missile convoy with the new commander, Brigadier Winifred Bambera. Brigadier Bambera is dismissive of the Doctor, but is informed by her sergeant of the Doctor's status as UNIT's scientific adviser.

Bambera drives the Doctor and Ace to a local inn where Ace strikes up with a local named Shou Yuing, who shares her interest in explosives. The Doctor meanwhile examines a scabbard unearthed by Warmsly and hung on the wall. The wife of the proprietor, Mrs. Rawlinson, warns the Doctor that something is off about the scabbard. She is blind, but she can sense power from it. The Doctor notes that it feels hot to the touch and agrees with her.

Bambera drives back but stops on seeing the TARDIS, having been warned to be on the lookout for it. While examining it, she is caught in a firefight between an armored knight and his three armored pursuers. Both are using swords and laser weapons. Bambera shoots back but her gun has no effect. The lone knight retreats but one of them throws a grenade and launches him through the air and into the brewery building next to the inn.

Hearing the crash, the Doctor, Ace and Shou Yuing go to investigate. The find the knight alive, though knocked out briefly. The knight is Ancelyn and he recognizes the Doctor as Merlin, though with a different face. Bambera arrives and tries to arrest the lot but she is interrupted by the other knights. Their leader is Mordred who aims to kill them. However upon seeing the Doctor, whom he also recognizes as Merlin, he retreats, preferring to leave him to his mother Morgaine.

Mordred retreats to a sanctum established in a local castle and uses the power of his sword to open a porthole for his mother to pass through. She arrives during the night while the Doctor's group is hunkered down at the inn. The scabbard leaps off it's mounting and imbeds itself in a post, pulled toward the dig site.

During all this, retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is at his home with his wife Doris. He receives a call from Geneva and dismisses them at first but changes his mind when he hears the Doctor has come back. He is picked up via helicopter and flown to London to be briefed. He and Lt. Lavel then fly north to the site of the action. His helicopter is observed by Morgaine and she brings it down with a surge of power from her hand. The Brigadier and Lavel survive the crash but Lavel is injured. The Brigadier heads to town to get help.

In town he is confronted by Morgaine but she does not attack, seeing a fellow warrior. She had ordered her forces to stand down as they had arrived on a memorial to the World War I and II dead and sheading blood on a memorial for soldiers would be seen as dishonorable. She warns the Brigadier that she will kill him the next time they meet on the field of battle. The Brigadier continues and commandeers the car of Shou Yuing, forcing her into the passenger seat.

The Doctor and Ace return to the dig site with Warmsly where they uncover a stone with the Doctor's writing. He orders Ace to create a hole and she detonates an explosive there, revealing a concrete passage nearly 1300 years old. They enter the passage and then a buried spaceship. The Doctor triggers a door using his voice pattern, figuring that a future version of himself must have set all this in place.

They enter the chamber where a knight in suspended animation is slumped over an alter with a sword buried in it. Ace accidentally pulls the sword out, trigging a defensive system that attacks them. Ace runs back into a cubby which seals behind her and begins to fill with water. The Doctor triggers a button on a console which opens a hatch and shoots Ace to the surface like a torpedo where she swims to shore, gathered up by Warmsley and Ancelyn.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart arrives and upon hearing Ace's story, runs into the tunnel. He takes the control from the stunned Doctor and deactivates the security system. The two return to the surface and gather the whole party in two cars to head back to the inn. Most pile in the UNIT car but Brigadier Bambera and Ancelyn take Shou Yuing's car with Bambera a bit put out at Letbrigde-Stewart having taken over command.

Mordred arrives at the inn where he is confronted by Lieutenant Lavel. Morgaine also arrives and probes Lavel's mind, learning of the Brigadier's plans and arrival. She then kills Lavel, turning her body to ash. However, she also pays for the pint Mordred drank by restoring sight to Mrs. Rawlinson. Morgaine orders Mordred to lead the men to attack the UNIT forces while she goes after the Doctor and Excalibur.

Mordred's men ambush the two cars returning to the inn but Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's gets through. Brigadier Bambera and Ancelyn are run off the road and are forced to run back to the lake to regroup with other UNIT soldiers.

The other car arrives at the inn where another group of UNIT soldiers is unloading specially designed munitions for alien invaders. The Doctor puts in an order for silver bullets and then hypnotizes the Rawlinsons and Warmsley into evacuating. He leaves Excalibur with Ace and Shou Yuing and orders Ace that if things go funny to draw a circle with a piece of chalk he gives her and stay inside it.

The Doctor and the Brigadier drive back to the lake to see UNIT and Mordred's men engaged in combat. He runs in to stop the fighting but Mordred laughs at him, noting that this is just a feint. The Doctor realizes that the real attack is now against Ace.

Ace and Shou Yuing stay in the circle as darkness envelops the inn, though light remains in the circle. The two girls start fighting as they think they hear the other one insult them but they realize they are being tricked. Finally Morgaine herself appears with a demon called The Destroyer to recover Excalibur. However, she cannot penetrate the chalk circle. The Destroyer can but Morgaine refuses to unbind his silver chains to unleash his full power.

The Doctor calls out to Morgaine, threatening to kill Mordred but she dismisses him as bluffing. However, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart steps up, prepared to shoot Mordred and Morgaine knows he is not bluffing. She abandons Mordred and the Doctor and the Brigadier stuff him into Bessie and drive back to the inn. The Destroyer breaches the circle and he and Morgaine head back to the castle with Excalibur, destroying part of the inn in the process.

The Doctor and the Brigadier arrive with the real Excalibur to find Ace and Shou Yuing partially buried in the ruins but ok. They also notice the gateway used by Morgaine and the Destroyer is still open, being held open by the Destroyer. The Doctor and the Brigadier hurry through it. Ace follows a few moments later with two boxes of silver bullets. Mordred slips away from Bessie and runs back to the castle on foot.

In the castle, Morgaine uses Excalibur to try and reopen the portal to their own world. The Doctor, the Brigadier and Ace arrive to confront her. Threatened, Morgaine orders her men to attack UNIT and finally unbinds the Destroyer's chains, catching the Doctor off guard. Mordred reappears, catching his mother off guard as well. He is put out at her abandonment of him but the two vanish away from the castle as the Doctor steals Excalibur back from her.

The three retreat from the castle with the Doctor telling them that silver bullets are the only way to stop the Destroyer. He loads the Brigadier's gun with the bullets and prepares to go back in. However, the Brigadier knocks him out and takes the gun in himself. He confronts the Destroyer, shooting him and running as the demon explodes. The Doctor comes to as the castle explodes. He finds the Brigadier just outside the ruins of the castle, dirty and bloodied but alive. The three then head to the lake to stop Morgaine.

UNIT successfully defeats Morgaine's troops but Brigadier Bambera is captured by Mordred and taken to Morgaine, who probes her mind to discover how to activate the missile. The Doctor, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Ace return Excalibur to the ship and find that Arthur is actually dead, having died in battle 1,000 years ago. The Doctor finds a note left by his future self, warning of the armed missile and heads off to find Morgaine. Ace and the Brigadier are left with orders to destroy the ship, which Ace does with relish.

The Doctor finds Morgaine and confronts her with the reality that nuclear destruction is death without honor. She relents and deactivates the missile but demands to face Arthur in combat again. He reveals that Arthur died and she wilts with a lack of purpose, her thirst for revenge unfulfilled. He has Morgaine arrested, along with Mordred, whom he disarms just prior to killing Anselyn in single combat.

Victorious, the whole group returns to the Brigadier's estate where the ladies all take Bessie for a day in town, leaving the Brigadier, the Doctor and Anselyn to work the garden and prepare dinner.

Analysis

Battlefield is a story that probably had a significant amount of potential when it was first written, but the background folks let it down. It was padded which bloats the story and the acting took a hard turn into the scenery chewing vein and not in a good way.

The more stories I've seen, the more I like the Seventh Doctor and this story is no exception. The Doctor adapts rather well to the conditions shown him and unlike the other stories of this season where he is a bit too much in control, there is enough wrong-footedness to make his performance that much stronger. Being forced to adapt to things you haven't done yet puts the Doctor in the unique position of having to figure things out on the fly. Of course, it also gives an extra sense of boldness since the Doctor knows that he must survive in order to be Merlin in the future and set things in motion for his past self. But it still works.

It was nice to see the Brigadier again. I thought he did very well and in Episode Four he took Ace's position away as primary companion, to the point that he made a little joke of it. I liked the Brig in this one, especially as he fully gave way to the Doctor and was prepared for just about anything. I also appreciated his candor about the situation, knocking the Doctor out because he felt he was more expendable than the Doctor. In early drafts of the script, the Brigadier was supposed to die in the confrontation with the Destroyer. I'm glad he didn't but if that had been kept, it would have been a noble and fitting end for him.

I was a little disappointed by Ace in this story. Part of that comes from a sense of Sophie Aldred trying a bit too hard with the teenager bit in her scenes with Shou Yuing. Her nature works well in contrast with the Doctor and the Brigadier because she is so much younger than they are and the naivety plays more naturally. When she is with peers or even other people, it starts coming across that she is older than what she is trying to play and there is a sense of wrongness about it. It's not terrible, but it just rubs wrong during the story.

Where this story really starts to fall apart though is in the guest cast. Most of the ancillary characters are middling at best in their acting. A couple stand out as being a little better here and there but most aren't great. The three that really disappoint though are Brigadier Bambera, Mordred and Morgaine. Bambera is supposed to be this "tough as nails" sort of commander, but she comes across as more of a jerk than anything else. It's hard to imagine anyone with more of a "shoot first and ask questions later" person than Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, but there she is. However, this does not enhance her character but instead makes her into a dumb hothead. She doesn't know the Doctor and constantly gets her foot into it. She is further diminished by playing up a comedy role for her as the object of Ancelyn's affection which is so cliché that it just doesn't work very well.

I didn't expect much out of Mordred so his turns to camp were not overly surprising, though no less painful. His scenery chewing, especially with Ancelyn made me just long for the Brigadier to pull the trigger on him when he is cornered at the beginning of Episode Four. But despite that, Morgaine was actually worse for me. I think this is due to the fact that Jean Marsh is a good actress and she has been shown to play her roles well, even in other Doctor Who stories. Here, she is incredibly over-the-top and scenery chewing and it goes to the point of being almost community theater level of portraying the bad guy.

While I was watching her performance, I found myself wondering why her performance was so painful to watch when Anthony Ainley's performances as the Master were probably just as campy but enjoyable. My speculation is that Ainley knew when to pull it back when he had to for dramatic purposes and that his camp was always layered in a sense of fun that the Master would have. Whatever the circumstances, the Master was enjoying himself and the whole plot was just a game. Here, Morgaine is set out with a mission to find and recover Excalibur and then defeat Arthur. There is nothing fun in that so her decent into camp feels exactly like an actor doing a bad job rather than playing up the mustache twirly-ness for comedic effect. I wouldn't have thought it bad, but it just didn't work for me.

As interesting as the idea was, there were also some problems with the writing. Some of this came to stringing out of the plot, which added scenes and expanded the scope, but that expansion also created extra threads which just left things dangling.

I genuinely did not understand what the whole bit with the nuclear missile had to do with anything. That was never made a focus of Morgaine's at any point. Her goal was always to recover Excalibur and then battle Arthur. Fleeing before the released Destroyer was one thing but the idea of setting off the nuclear missile out of effectively spite, only to be talked down because of a lack of honor in such a killing was just dumb. Had she taken over the missile and threatened to use it unless Arthur came to challenge her and then have her face the reality of Arthur's death would have played much better. It would have put the focus on her revenge rather than another anti-nuclear bit that was very common in the 80's.

In many ways, the inclusion of the Destroyer himself is rather pointless. He is introduced midway in Episode Three and then dispatched early in Episode Four. There is a lot of build up towards with the silver bullets but it's a bit too much for a simple dragon and it took the focus off Morgaine and she should have stayed the focus in my opinion. It feels like another instance of putting a monster in Doctor Who simply so there will be a monster.

One of the few good scenes that came out of the need to pad this story out to four episodes is a reunification between Nicholas Courtney and Jean Marsh. Jean Marsh made her Doctor Who debut in The Crusade but they were both featured prominently in Nicholas Courtney's first appearance in The Daleks' Master Plan where Jean Marsh's Sarah Kingdom shot and killed Nicholas Courtney's Bret Vyon. The characters show a great deal of respect for each other and you can't help but think that very little acting is actually going on as it is two distinguished actors giving each other respect. As an overall scene, it is completely pointless and puts a rather odd bit of honor in what is otherwise rather ruthless killing, but I still enjoyed seeing the two of them share the screen together.

Another thought that came to me while I was watching was how the story should have been tightened further in regard to the Brigadier. I'm not well versed in the Arthurian legend about his return, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that the Brigadier was playing the role of Arthur. He had retired to his own Avalon with Doris but is summoned back by Merlin (the Doctor). He leads his forces to victory over Morgaine and her dragon and in early drafts of the story, the Brigadier actually died which would have further played into the legend, given Arthur's own death against Mordred's forces. You even have the nice tie in with the actors having played brother and sister in a previous story. But it felt like the Arthurian bits got dropped by Episode Four, and it just didn't quite work after that. You had a tiny little revival when Morgaine effectively gives up after learning of Arthur's death (much like the legend) but since so little focus had been given on that part of Morgaine's desire, it didn't really go anywhere.

That little point also speaks to a larger problem with the ending. Mordred is disarmed and captured. Fine, that works. But Morgaine also gives up and yet she still has all her technology/magical powers that she had before. Are we to assume that she is going to meekly submit to spending the next few years sitting in a British prison and will be released at some future point? That makes absolutely no sense. If the story didn't want to kill the antagonists, fine. I can deal with that. But the Doctor should have arranged to have them detained in their own dimension or exiled to some other world as a prison there. These are not conventional criminals that you just toss in a cell. It's another aspect of the odd pacing that came about by the expansion.

I rather wonder if in the original story, Morgaine is killed or mortally wounded by the Destroyer and calls for Arthur to finish her off after the Brigadier defeats him. There the Doctor would have stood over her and told her that Arthur was dead and that her revenge was pointless. I would have been a bit of the dark Doctor showing up and fully closing Morgaine's story rather than just letting it dangle at the end.

The production values of this story aren't bad for the 80's. It is fairly well directed and there is some nice camera work. There are a number of visual effects which do look very fake, even for the time. In fact, just about everything the Destroyer does looks quite bad. Despite the fact that the Destroyer himself actually looks really good. I'm going to fault the times and the budget more than anything and compared to the other problems of this story, it's a minor thing.

This is a story that I can honestly say I wished I liked more. There is potential here both in plotline and the talent available. But it just turned into a steaming pile. There are too many groaner moments to outweigh the good moments, especially between the Doctor and the Brigadier. There are far better Seventh Doctor stories and I think the final ride of the Brigadier is the only reason to give this one a second time around.

Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5

The Happiness Patrol

Happiness shall prevail.

The Happiness Patrol is a story that seems to rate in the lower middle of most fan's lists. I don't know that I've ever run into anyone that raved over it but I have heard of several fans that despise it, mostly due to the Kandy Man. I've been of a mixed mind on this one as it is hard to overlook a prejudice that significant, but I found that I've had a better appreciation of some of the Seventh Doctor stories than general fandom so I'm trying to keep an open mind.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Ace arrive on the Earth colony of Terra Alpha, which the Doctor had been meaning to look into for a while due to troubling rumors. He and Ace walk around a bit and run into a census taker named Trevor Sigma. When they come back to the TARDIS they find a squad from the Happiness Patrol painting it pink, having just returned from the execution of a killjoy (someone not happy). The Doctor and Ace manage to get themselves arrested and taken to a waiting area.

The colony is run by a woman named Helen A who works with a sadistic henchman called the Kandy Man. Helen A sends out a message of happiness to the citizens before having a man executed by being smothered to death in tube of fondant sent up from the Kandy Man. Her address is watched by another man in the holding area who used to be a joke writer for Helen A. However, he began investigating disappearances in the colony and was sent away. As he relates this to the Doctor and Ace, Helen A sends a charge through the machine he is using and electrocutes him.

The Doctor and Ace disable a booby trap on a patrol cart and leave the waiting area. They soon split up with Ace surrendering to the Happiness Patrol on the pretext of wanting to join them. She is taken back to the Patrol HQ where she befriends a member of the patrol named Susan Q, who is becoming disillusioned with life in the colony and on the patrol.

The Doctor meets a tourist named Earl Sigma who has been trapped on the colony and now working against the regime. To avoid a patrol, they dash into a building only to find that it is the Kandy Man's kitchen where he prepares to use them to experiment on. He places them in chairs for testing his sweets on but the Doctor tricks him into knocking over a bottle of lemonade, which causes his feet to stick to the floor (being made of confectionary). The Doctor and Earl flee into the underground tunnels.

Ace and Susan Q are taken from the Patrol HQ to another waiting area where they are sentenced to execution. This movement is observed by creatures living in the tunnels. The Doctor and Earl run into these creatures, who are the natives of the planet. The Doctor recognizes slogans they picked up from overhearing Ace and they recognize him as a friend.

The natives escort the Doctor through the sewers and let him and Earl out near where Trevor Sigma is conducting business. Earl leaves and the Doctor overrides Trevor and they head off to see Helen A. Helen A greets Trevor warmly but the Doctor takes command and warns Helen A to change how things are done on the colony. She dismisses him and the Doctor walks out.

After meeting the Doctor, one of the natives conducts a raid on the holding area and rescues Ace. Susan Q had already been taken away for execution. Upon learning of the escape, Helen A sends her pet Stigorax, Fifi, into the sewers after them. Ace blows up the tunnel with a can of Nitro-9, before slipping down another shaft.

The Doctor heads back towards the Kandy Kitchen, stopping a pair of snipers who had been firing on a crowd of striking workers on his way. He finds the Kandy Man still suck to the floor where he left him. He offers to free the Kandy Man if he diverts the flow of fondant, preventing another execution. The Kandy Man agrees and changes the flow of the fondant just before Susan Q is to be killed. The change in pipe flow also causes Ace and her native guide to be dropped into the execution area where she is rearrested.

Trevor Sigma informs Helen A that per galactic law, Susan Q and Ace cannot be executed by the same method if it fails once. She then orders the two women to be taken to the forum for public execution.

Knowing that he would attack him again, the Doctor resticks the Kandy Man to the floor and heads off to find Ace. He learns from posters being put up of Ace's impending execution in the forum. The Doctor signals Earl Sigma who joins up with striking factory workers to head towards the forum. As the Happiness Patrol approaches with Ace, the Doctor breaks into wild laughter. Earl and the strikers approach, also laughing and acting overly silly. With all acting in apparently happiness, the patrol is confused on what to do. The Doctor, Ace, Susan Q and Earl all slip away in a vehicle while the squad leader, Pricilla P turns and arrests her lieutenant Daisy K for her confusion.

Helen A sends Fifi, who survived Ace's Nitro-9 attack, back into the pipes to hunt down the Doctor and his companions. The natives hear Fifi in the pipes and warn the Doctor. The Doctor stops under a factor that has developed a leak and has developed large stalactites of hardened sugar. He has Earl play resonance notes on his harmonica and then runs. The stalactites break off and crush Fifi as she chases them.

Earl and Susan separate from the Doctor and Ace and assist the strikers into becoming full rioters. They overwhelm the Happiness Patrol squads and begin destroying the factories. Helen A recalls Daisy K to the palace, ordering Pricilla P to wait in the holding area. However, Pricilla P is overrun by the rioters and bound before she can regroup the patrol.

The Doctor and Ace head back to the Kandy Kitchen where they overheat the oven and drive the Kandy Man away. He flees into the pipes to escape. The natives enter and take control of the pipes, redirecting fondant through the pipes, destroying the Kandy Man. Seeing his work destroyed, Gilbert M flees the planet with Helen A's husband Joseph C in her private shuttle, leaving her stranded on the planet.

As more factories are destroyed, Helen A flees the palace, leaving Daisy K as the only defense. She is overrun and disarmed by Susan Q. She and Earl Sigma shut down all remaining defenses and controls. The Doctor meanwhile meets Helen A in the streets, confronting her on her desire for happiness. She resists until she sees Fifi's dead body lying near by, brought up by the Doctor. Seeing her beloved pet dead breaks her and Helen A collapses around her pet in a fit of sobbing.

The surviving members of the Happiness Patrol are placed in work gangs and ordered to help clean up the city. The people take control with Earl Sigma noting that he plans to stay and help supervise. The Doctor and Ace then depart in the TARDIS, which has been repainted its original blue.

Analysis

I either read or heard somewhere that there was discussion of possibly filming this story in black and white to add to its film-noir feel. I don't think that would have worked as the washed out color fits the mood of the story better, but this is clearly Doctor Who does film-noir. I liked this one much more than I was originally expecting. It does have flaws and fairly significant ones at that, but it does it's job well and most of those flaws can be overlooked to enjoy the story as a whole.

I really enjoyed the Seventh Doctor. In fact, if the majority of the Seventh Doctor stories had had him like this, I think he would have taken the position as my favorite Doctor from the Second Doctor. He was not the all-knowing Doctor, but came in suspicious. Once he got the bead, he developed a plan and executed it with nearly flawless precision. Some of that plan even involved facing down and taking the measure of the enemy directly.

I think my favorite moment in the entire story was a throw away scene where the Doctor stops two male members of the patrol who are sniping factory strikers. He walks up directly behind the snipers and stares the gunner straight down. He forces the man to look him in the face and dares him to shoot him. It is a challenge to the will of the shooter and reminded me of the scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Andy Dufresne literally wills Captain Hadley not to throw him to his death. It was a very well played scene and showed a strength in the Doctor that is sometimes lacking in other stories.

I enjoyed Ace but she was very underused in this story. When she was with the Doctor, she was a tag team partner at best. When she was away from him, she was being held by the Happiness Patrol for most of the time and didn't do much there either. Her interaction with Susan Q was nice but it was rushed in development and still didn't have a major impact on the overall flow of the story. Nice but ultimately forgettable.

I enjoyed nearly all of the secondary characters. Helen A in particular was quite good in that over the top mad way. Drawing on other media, she reminded me of Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I know she was supposed to be a take on Margaret Thatcher but, not being British, I can't speak to that. I also enjoyed the dry and slightly droll performances of her husband and the Kandy Man's creator. The two men were so dry in their delivery that it stood out as quite funny to me.

I also surprisingly enjoyed the fact that Helen A was not simply gunned down as you might expect in a revolution story, such as The Sunmakers. Instead, being forced to confront the shattering of what she viewed as perfection seemed like a more appropriate punishment. In the end she is not just killed off, but instead forced to deal with the reality of pain and suffering and how they complete us as people. It makes her even more pathetic to see her broken and weeping over the carcass of Fifi than it would be to see her own carcass lying in the street.

Going back to the film noir aspect, I enjoyed how this story was shot. I think it would have looked even better on film, but they did a decent job with what they had. There was a grit in the scenes and the lighting was very muted which gave everyone a washed out look, adding to the disassociation between the requirement of happiness and the reality of the situation. There was also a very good use of shadow to hide various flaws that existed in the scenery and in Fifi herself. I also happened to see this off an old VHS recording and the graininess that exists in that medium actually helped the story in my opinion. If I were to rewatch it in a DVD or Blue Ray, I think the clarity of the picture might actually detract from the story due to too much contrast being introduced.

With all of that good stuff there were some flaws, none of which were enough to ruin the story, but they could have made it better. Going off the previous point of the sets, lighting and direction, all of that couldn't fully hide the limitations of the budget. There is a lot of cast and a lot of set and it is obvious that they had to cut corners here and there. The vehicles are essentially go-karts and the flow of fondant never looked impressive enough to actually kill someone. There were a couple of other points where it was just difficult to contain the idea that this was confined on a soundstage. I think if this story had been shot on location in an abandoned warehouse of factory and dressed up from there, I think it would have covered up some of the cheapness that seeped through.

The second flaw that stood out to me was the pacing. A true film-noir needs time to breathe and this story didn't breathe quite enough. So much story was being told that it often a jump from scene to scene without any real clarity in how they got there. It's not as bad as it is in a few other Seventh Doctor stories (such as Ghost Light), but there is still a rushed feeling that shouldn't be there in a noir piece. I don't think expanding it to four episodes would have been the right move as it would have introduced too much padding, but if a scene or two were trimmed or reedited, I think it would have flowed better.

Probably the best scenes for editing (or even outright excisement) would be the Kandy Man scenes and that is my third and largest flaw in the story. The Kandy Man sticks out in this story as so out of place. While everyone else is human and there is a real level of grit, you introduce this sadistic creature that serves almost no point. He supplies the fondant for the executions but other than that, he does nothing in the story. What's more, he appears to be living confectionary and that just seems so out of left field in what is otherwise not much of a science fiction story.

I could forgive the wackiness of the Kandy Man if he had an actual point. But all of his scenes are just the guardian of the Kandy Kitchen, supplying the fuel of execution. This could have easily just been done by Gilbert M himself and those scenes sharply reduced in length, allowing the rest of the story some breathing room. Imagine for example that in Episode Two, instead of the Doctor freeing the Kandy Man to make him divert the fondant in Susan Q's execution, the Doctor instead sneaks behind Gilbert M and forces him to divert the flow by threatening to expose his own lack of happiness. Not only would it have trimmed the scene and given it a more realistic tone, but it would have given extra motivation for Gilbert's flight at the end of the story. I don't hate the Kandy Man the way some fans seem to, but it's just weirdness for weirdness sake and a character that adds nothing to the story at the expense of other more significant elements.

Overall, I enjoyed this story. It lost me in a couple of places, but reeled me back in with a good noir take. It has it's problems, but much like Paradise Towers and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, the quality of the performances and the atmosphere salvage the overall story, allowing the good to outweigh the bad. I would like to watch this one again, preferably with a higher quality copy to see if that clarity hurts or helps the overall story.

Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5

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

Remembrance of the Daleks

Crush the lesser races! Conquer the galaxy! Unimaginable power! Unlimited rice pudding! Et cetera! Et cetera!

Remembrance of the Daleks is the one story that people who do not like the Seventh Doctor era will come back and give an exception to. It's also funny to see the old time fans geek out whenever there is a glimpse of the Special Weapons Dalek introduced in this story. I looked forward to this story with a bit of trepidation as you always do when you hear that something is supposedly so good and yet you fear that you may not like it.

Plot Summary

The story opens with Ace and the Doctor arriving at Coal Hill School in 1963. The Doctor is immediately intrigued by a monitoring van with advanced monitoring technology. Ace leaves for a bit to get something to eat at a local café where she meets Sgt. Mike Smith. The Doctor enters the van to study the equipment and meets Professor Rachel Jensen. Ace and Sgt. Smith return as the group is called away to the death of a soldier. Ace and the Doctor tag along. All this is observed by a young girl.

The van arrives at the I. M. Foreman junkyard where a soldier has been killed by a Dalek blast. The Doctor notes that the Dalek is trapped in a shed. He urges Group Captain Gilmore to disengage but Gilmore orders his men to attack. The Dalek emerges, unphased by the human weapons. The Doctor orders Ace to give him two bottles of Nitro-9 which he uses to destroy the Dalek. Ace and the Doctor then steal a van and head back to Coal Hill.

Sgt. Smith turns over the remains of the Dalek to a specialist named Ratcliffe, who takes it back to a special facility. However, Ratcliffe is a fascist and working with a mysterious Dalek figure who remains hooded.

Ace and the Doctor arrive back at the school and begin to look around. The Doctor suspects the Daleks are looking for the Hand of Omega, a weapon that the Doctor took with him when he left Gallifrey. He notes rocket blast patterns and suspects that the school is a center of Dalek activity. Searching the basement, they find a matter transporter. The Doctor sabotages it as a Dalek is arriving, killing it. However the activity arouses a monitor Dalek. Ace gets to the exit where she is knocked out by the headmaster. He then locks the Doctor in, trapping him. Ace quickly comes to and knocks the headmaster down and releases the Doctor. They run as the Dalek blasts through the door and orders the headmaster, who is under Dalek control, to repair the transporter.

Outside the school, the Doctor discovers a weapons transport ordered by Gilmore, including several anti-tank rockets. Taking possession of them, they reenter the school as the headmaster has finished repairing the transporter. Alerted to the human presence, the Dalek attacks and Ace destroys it with the rocket.

Gilmore has ordered more weapons to be brought up but they won't be there until the morning. Unaware that the transport has been repaired, the Doctor leaves on an errand. Ace and the other women go to Mike's mother's house to spend the night. The Doctor ponders his next action over a mug of tea at the local café, contemplating the repercussions. Early in the morning, he takes possession of a coffin from a local undertaker in which the Hand of Omega is hidden. He also uses it to infuse Ace's bat, which he borrowed, with stellar energy. The Doctor then has the coffin buried in a local cemetery.

The Doctor meets up with the military and they head back to headquarters with the Doctor ordering Ace to stay behind until he sends for her. She reluctantly agrees but eventually leaves the house, become disgusted upon finding a "No Coloreds" sign hanging. She heads back to the school and discovers that several Daleks have appeared through the repaired matter transporter. She partially disables one with the amplified bat, but is quickly cornered by three other Daleks. However the military and the Doctor arrive at this moment, having become aware of her departure. The Doctor uses a sonic weapon to distract the Daleks enough to get Ace free and then the military destroys the three with more anti-tank rockets.

Looking over the wreckage, the Doctor realizes there are two factions of Daleks in pursuit of the Hand. The Doctor decides to work to ensure the correct faction takes control of the Hand. He once again disables the transporter and gives instructions to Gilmore to fortify the school. The Doctor fills Ace in that he actually wants the Daleks to capture the Hand, which is a stellar manipulator, he stole from Gallifrey when he fled with Susan. He is now simply focused on making sure the humans don't get in the way and killed.

Ratcliffe, working on information from Mike, locates the buried Hand and pulls in a team to recover it. He is unnerved that as his men work, they are observed by the same young girl who has randomly appeared through the story. Eventually, they extract the Hand and take it back to their warehouse. At the warehouse, the mysterious figure reveals itself to be the young girl, having been transformed into a Dalek battle computer by the lead renegade Dalek. She activates the control device for the time corridor and then has all of Ratcliffe's men killed.

The Doctor and Ace arrive at the warehouse, having tracked the Hand's signal. They sneak in and sabotage the time corridor controller, delaying the renegade Daleks' escape as well as alerting the Imperial Daleks of their location. The Doctor further distracts the renegades by leaving a calling card. This attracts the Daleks who move out in pursuit back to the school.

The renegade Daleks attack the school but pull back before they breach the defenses upon being informed of the approach of an Imperial Dalek transport. The transport lands and several Daleks emerge, heading towards the warehouse. The initial force is beaten back by the renegades and they call in reinforcements in the form of the special weapons Dalek.

In the melee, Mike let's slip that he has been working for Ratcliffe and is arrested. However, he escapes his captors and makes his way to the warehouse where he is captured by the renegades. However, as the Imperial Daleks attack, Mike and Ratcliffe break loose and grab the time corridor control. The Dalek computer girl is sent after them and she kills Ratcliffe with an electric discharge. Mike continues to flee and she goes after him.

The Doctor sneaks aboard the Dalek transport ship and disables their ground defenses, allowing them free passage. He also uses the technology to hack into the communications system. As he does so, the Imperial Daleks capture the Hand of Omega. The Doctor and his group head back to the school basement where the Doctor uses the transporter to create a communications device with the Dalek mothership.

Ace does not go with the Doctor. Learning of Mike's escape, she heads back to his mother's house to try and take him back in. Upon arrival, he holds her hostage with his gun. But, the Dalek computer girl arrives and kills him with an electrical burst. She then turns on Ace.

As the transport arrives, the Doctor signals the mothership and the Dalek Emperor reveals himself as Davros. Incited by the Doctor, Davros activates the Hand of Omega, intent on increasing the power of the Skaroan sun for weapons development. Instead, the Hand causes the Skaroan sun to go supernova, destroying Skaro in the process. The feedback recoils and the Dalek mothership is destroyed also, although Davros flees in an escape pod prior to its destruction.

With the Imperial Daleks gone, the Doctor confronts the sole remaining renegade Dalek. The Doctor informs it that all renegade Daleks, Skaro, and even Davros have been destroyed. Unable to process it's failure, the remaining Dalek self destructs. This also frees the mind of the Dalek computer girl, who had been trying to kill Ace. Ace comforts her as she comes back to her normal self. Later, Ace and the Doctor quietly slip away as the remaining group attend a memorial service for Mike.

Analysis

This was an altogether excellent story and I can see how even those that are not fans of the Seventh Doctor enjoy it. I must also say that I'm glad I saw Silver Nemesis first as the two stories are very nearly identical except that instead of two factions of Daleks, you have Cybermen vs. Nazis. I can also understand the disappointment with Silver Nemesis more as Remembrance of the Daleks is more obviously the true twenty-fifth anniversary story, no matter what the labels say.

As fun as the constant action and blowing stuff up was, the true greatness of the story is in how it was played. All the actors took the story seriously and they didn't allow themselves to be carried away in either melodrama or in too much parody of who their character was supposed to be an homage to. I say that because every major character was a callback to a previous character. The most obvious is Group Captain Gilmore who the Doctor even calls Brigadier early in the story. But other characters are reflective as well.

The misguided and treacherous Mike Smith is a call back to the betrayal of Captain Mike Yates, with a dash of Sgt. Benton thrown in. Professor Jenson is a nice blend of the appearance and kindness of Barbra but with the intelligence and confidence of Liz Shaw. Allison has that spunky young blonde that is reminiscent of Jo but with a dash of the reliable competence from Vicki.

There were other homages as well. Obviously the whole thing being centered around Coal Hill School and the I. M. Foreman junkyard are pretty blatant. But you also have subtle touches, such as Ace picking up a book on the French Revolution (loaned from Barbara to Susan in An Unearthly Child) and the bulk of the classroom action taking place in the chemistry room (Ian's classroom). There are several other points in the story where people who had interacted with the Doctor recall seeing a white-haired old man rather than the Seventh Doctor. It is the light touch that helps this story as if it had become too obvious in it's references, the charm would have been lost.

On that note, there is the plot. My general complaint about Seventh Doctor stories is that they are forced to leave information out so that either the plot or the motivations of some of the characters are lost. Here, we have a strong action story that is allowed to have a few moments to breathe and explain any missing points. In fact, the only thing that is left unresolved is how the Doctor knew that it was the Hand of Omega the Daleks were after. That is a glossed over plot point and once the story gets fully going, you soon let that point go.

The story stays tight with the Doctor and Ace jumping in right away. There is little downtime where we feel like we are waiting for something to happen and even the few "back and forth" moments seem purposeful and a natural progression from the previous point. What few quiet moments there are are given over to the Doctor explaining things in a more natural feeling exposition scene or to character building moments, causing us to care about these characters more as the story progresses.

This also has to be one of the Doctor's best stories in terms of keeping people alive. Only a handful of soldiers are killed on the army side whereas Ratcliffe's entire retinue makes up the bulk of the human casualties. None of the Doctor's group are killed except for the treacherous Mike and even he could have stayed alive if he had let things go and stayed in custody.

The direction of this story is quite good as well. The actor's performances are utilized well and a number of differing angles are used for shots. There is excellent lighting and the action sequences pop very well. I heard once that when they were filming the battle sequence early on a Sunday morning, several London residents called the police because of the explosions and then seeing Daleks emerge from the mist and smoke. The level of realism is quite good and seems incredible for a 1980's story. In fact, apart from camera style clues that I've cottoned on to from watching other British programs from this era, it is nearly impossible to tell that this story was made in the 80's. It has a flow and style that could easily be set in a much later era.

Looking over the production as a whole, I could really only pull two negatives. The first is that the Daleks occasionally fell victim to production problems. When moving about the London streets, that had a tendency to wobble and sway a bit over the cobblestones. That rattling gave enough of a visual cue reminder that these are simple props that it took me out of the story every once in a while. Not badly, but it was one of the few points where the production value slipped a bit.

The second negative was the interaction between Ace and Mike in Episode Four. Through the first three episodes, their interaction was pleasant and natural. However once Mike was revealed to be working for Ratcliffe and the renegade Daleks, there was a layer of tension and melodrama added to their interaction and I'm not sure either actor pulled it off well. Some of that is writing as it is very difficult to make melodramatic tension sound good but the couple of scenes they had together after that point were just unpleasant to watch, nearly to the point of being painful. It came not as a source of sadness but relief when the little girl went Palpatine on Mike.

Speaking of the little girl, that was a very good piece of filming there. The girl was quite creepy and the use of nursery rhyme music whenever she appeared gave her an extra level of creepiness. I have wonder if Steven Moffat didn't have her in mind with his little "Tick Tock" rhyme in Series Six. Compound that with her surprise reveal as the Dalek battle computer. The production team did a good job in misdirecting the audience into thinking Ratcliffe was working with Davros and that the Emperor was another Dalek. The reveal of the girl as the computer and Davros as the Emperor was very satisfying to watch.

Overall, this is an excellent story and one that I would easily return to for a second watch. I can also imagine showing this story to a relative newcomer to Doctor Who and having them enjoy it on one level while a more experienced fan enjoys it on a deeper level. A well executed story all around that is enjoyable to just about anyone that gives it a chance.

Overall personal score: 5 out of 5

Dimensions In Time

I've seen them thrown out of the Vic, but never dragged in.

So how bad is Dimensions in Time? Pretty bad. It's actually even worse if, like me, you know nothing about East Enders and wouldn't know any of the characters if they walked up and introduced themselves. Despite everything that had gone on in the past, you do have to give JNT credit for trying to put together something fun for the thirtieth anniversary, but this is pretty bad.

Plot Summary

The special opens with the Third Doctor visiting the set of Noel's House Party and showing everyone the new special (including 3-D effects). They then cut to the Rani who has exiled the First and Second Doctor to a loop in time, leaving their projected heads swirling around her TARDIS.

The Fourth Doctor sends out a distress signal as the Rani prepares to trap the remaining Doctors in the time loop. She targets the TARDIS and the Seventh Doctor and Ace materialize in 1973 London instead of China as intended. Blips in time begin to show as the Seventh Doctor gives way to the Sixth Doctor.

Time continues to slip mixing Doctors with companions at various points in time. The Third Doctor with Mel, the Sixth Doctor with Susan, the Third Doctor with Sarah Jane; all the while, the Doctor and companions interact with characters from East Enders. The Doctors realize that a time loop is oscillating things in twenty year spans, 1973, 1993, and 2013.

Fearing that the Doctor is on to her plan, the Rani releases specimens from her collection to deal with the Doctor. A Cyberman and an Ogron attack the Fifth Doctor, Peri and Nyssa. Other monsters materialize to chase them and the Rani herself materializes as the program breaks.

The audience in invited to vote for a helper for the Doctor: either Mandy or Big Ron. The show resumes the next day with Mandy as the winner of the audience poll.

The Fifth Doctor summons his other selves upon seeing the Rani. The Third Doctor appears with Liz Shaw. Liz charges the Rani to attack but is thrown off by a passer-by (Mandy). Captain Yates rolls up in Bessie to take the Third Doctor to the TARDIS as the Rani flees. The Brigadier lands in a helicopter, meeting the Sixth Doctor.

The Rani, having retreated to her TARDIS, prepares to materialize in the loop. Romana (II) appears to help but is pulled into the pub to keep her out of the way. The Third Doctor is back outside the TARDIS with Victoria. The Doctor takes the TARDIS to the Greenwich Meridian. The Rani's TARDIS appears nearby as the Seventh Doctor emerges from the TARIDS. Leela emerges from the Rani's TARDIS, having escaped but saying that she was cloned. The Doctor realizes that she is planning to open the time tunnel along the Meridian giving her control of the development of the universe.

Knowing that the Rani has a copy of Romana's brain print to work with, the Seventh Doctor sets up a feedback loop to pull the Rani's TARDIS in the time loop she has created with K-9 assisting. The Doctor's plan works, releasing the First and Second Doctor and pulling her TARDIS in. The Seventh Doctor and Ace prepare to leave with the time stream returned to normal.

Analysis

If you were to create a list of the things that I dislike in television stories, Dimensions in Time would probably hit all of them. Poor writing: check. Poor acting: check. Poor pacing: check. Poor visual effects: check. I'm sure their heart was in the right place, but this story is appallingly bad.

John Nathan-Turner was not a writer for the show and the fact that he gets co-writing credit on this shows why he didn't write. The story is overly confusing with a desperate attempt to cram as many cameos by past companions and East Enders characters in as possible. That actually is the primary motivation of the story and the Rani's plan, nor the Doctor's solution is ever really explained as to what they are doing.

Then the acting. Tom Baker is the worst as he isn't even half-assing it. Most of the other Doctor's do fairly well, although it's pretty obvious that Jon Pertwee can barely move due to the condition of his back. The companions fair less well with most of them failing to add any depth or energy to the wooden lines. Ace does well as her dialogue actually makes sense and Sarah Jane falls back into her role with ease. The Brig also comes across decent, although that is due more to his gravitas rather than anything special in the acting or writing. The East Enders folks are even worse with cornball lines thrown in an attempted jokey fashion that just sound stupid.

The camera work isn't bad as there is a lot of circling around in a way that would have made Aaron Sorkin proud, but the overall pacing is not particularly good. It is jump cut after jump cut after jump cut. I think they were trying to get a frenetic feeling but instead it gave it an overly rushed feeling. Characters are given one line to hurrily insert or a Doctor gets thirty seconds to cram as much exposition in as possible. Then at random moments, it slows down to give the wooden dialogue even more time to set it. It's just painful to watch.

The visual effects scream no money as well. They also scream early '90s and I'm willing to cut a little slack for that, much like I give Noel Edmonds a bit of a break for the shirts he is wearing. But they are still pretty darn bad. The dummy heads of the First and Second Doctors floating around set a bad tone. What's probably the actual worst is when the various enemies make cameo appearances. These are obviously recycled costumes and puppets from earlier episodes but the lighting and camera angles used make them look even more fake than when they were originally on. Going back to pacing, it's obvious that there is this desperate push to get as many villain cameos in as quick as possible in the 45 seconds allotted to the Fifth Doctor, Peri and Nyssa running through the square and it exposes the poor quality, much of which probably looks worse just because of natural deterioration.

I can see what JNT was going for as he obviously wanted something fun and fan service-y for the thirtieth anniversary but this is of the level of a student film. While I'm sure he had almost no budget to make this, they did have professional cameras and experience that should have put them over a student level production. Certainly having another writer take a second or third stab at the script also would have helped some.

But what still makes no sense is why an anniversary special for Doctor Who was paired for a crossover with East Enders. That would be like having an anniversary special of Star Trek where Kirk and his crew interacted with folks on Dallas. The two settings are at cross purposes and I can't see how either fan base would be interested in the overall story.

I will say that for more casual fans at the time, it probably felt good to see the old characters again. Hardcore fans were probably appalled at the lack of quality and it would have seemed like a horrible way to watch the show you loved disappear into the darkness. For someone watching from the future, it just seems silly and poorly done. I would say that anyone who enjoys Doctor Who should watch it at least once, just for the experience and to get an added perspective on not only how good the new series is, but even on how bad things really could have been during the low points of the mid/late-'80's. But once you've seen it once, that's more than enough unless you intend to go full MST3K.

Overall personal score: 0 out of 5

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

I never liked clowns.

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is a rather meta story. It started as somewhat surreal, but as soon as Whizz Kid showed up, a very tongue in cheek vibe could be felt. It probably didn't help that the story had an obvious disdain for that character. This is a rather odd contrast with Silver Nemesis which aired prior to this. That was complete fan service romp (albeit with some cheek). It lends credence to the idea that the folks in charge of Doctor Who didn't know which way was up at this point.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Ace are in the TARDIS when they are visited by a robot. It taps in to the console and advertises The Psychic Circus, both to view and to compete in. Ace is hesitant but the Doctor shows interest. The robot goads her a little as well and she agrees. The two arrive and engage with a local fruit seller, who is dismissive of them and anything to do with the circus.

Elsewhere on the planet, two people, Bellboy and Flowerchild, are running away from the circus. They are pursued by clowns in a car and spied upon by kites above. The two split up with Bellboy trying to draw their pursuers attention. Flowerchild arrives at an abandoned bus and is attacked from behind, her attacker dragging her away leaving one earring behind. She had given the other to Bellboy.

The Doctor and Ace move along the road after a biker who was going to the circus. They are nearly run down by the clowns in the car, who pick up Bellboy after collapsing near the fruit stand. The Doctor and Ace stop and have tea with an explorer named Captain Cook and his assistant Mags. While there a robot buried in the sand awakes and begins to attack them. Ace knocks it out with a blow to the head.

The group walks on together and finds the same bus Flowerchild came to. Upon entering, they are accosted by a robot conductor with a lethal ticket machine. The Doctor tricks the robot and destroys it. Captain Cook and Mags walk on towards the circus but Ace and the Doctor stay behind to rest. Ace finds Flowerchild's earring and pins it to her jacket. The two then continue on towards the circus.

Bellboy is deposited back at the circus and then dragged into the center ring. Captain Cook and Mags arrive shortly after and observe him being punished in the ring. Mags begins to scream at the sight although the ringmaster mutes her scream. As Ace and the Doctor approach the circus, Ace can hear her scream but the Doctor cannot. With much reluctance, she enters the tent with the Doctor.

The Doctor engages in conversation with the gypsy running the ticket booth while she discusses the history of the circus. She seems rueful about their current stay on this planet. The chief clown invites them in to the big top. It is dark and they stumble about until a light comes up. There they see a family of three watching. The Doctor tries to engage them in conversation but they ignore him as the show starts. The Ringmaster invites the Doctor to participate in the show and after accepting is lead back. Ace is kept from the Doctor and she runs away from the clowns through the tunnels.

The Doctor sees Captain Cook, Mags and the biker in another room and goes to them. As he does, bars drop behind him and he is locked in a cage. Captain Cook informs him that it is now a game of survival. The biker is led away as the next act in the ring. In the ring, he impresses the family with a feat of strength but fails to impress them when he attempts to tell jokes. For that failure, he is vaporized.

Ace runs through the tunnels, eluding the clowns. She gets back to the main entrance where she overhears the gypsy and the ringmaster talking about the old days and how they are just part of a machine now. Ace is spotted and she runs back with the clowns chasing her. She finds Bellboy tied to a workbench and tries to talk to him but he does respond. The chief clown enters and drags Bellboy away to work on repairing the robotic clowns.

The Doctor and Mags hatch a plan to escape. While juggling, the start arguing about who will enter the ring first. When two clowns try to break up the argument, they strike them down and run into the tunnels. Captain Cook stays in the cage however. The Doctor and Mags wander through the tunnels until the come to a ancient stone passage. Although Mags is reluctant, they enter.

Ace nears the same entrance when she is cornered by the mentally damaged worker Deadbeat who alerts the chief clown. He drags Ace to the repair workshop and locks her in with the robot clowns. She notices that they start to move and advance towards her.

At the arrival of a new contestant, one who claims to be the circus' biggest fan, the ringmaster discovers the Doctor's escape. Captain Cook goes along and helps them find the Doctor and Mags, who have just discovered a well with an eye in it, identical to those on the kites. The Captain and the clowns take Mags but the Doctor runs off back towards the entrance.

Ace begins to fight off the clowns when they suddenly stop. In the same room is Bellboy who shuts them down upon seeing Ace whom he remembers showing him kindness. He talks wistfully of the days of the circus before it's current plight, when they were free to decide things themselves and just entertain. Filled with regret that one of his robots killed Flowerchild, tells Ace to keep Flowerchild's earring and also gives her a remote that controls a robot with the ability to fire lasers from it's eyes, similar to large one Ace knocked out with Captain Cook and Mags.

At the entrance, the Doctor spies the gypsy's crystal ball and sees a similar eye peering out of it. Deadbeat approaches the crystal but backs away fearful. The Doctor runs up to him in the tunnels and speaks of the eye and his fear. Deadbeat indicates for the Doctor to follow him.

In the big top, the family are growing restless and getting angry. The chief clown continues his search for the Doctor but orders the Ringmaster to send Captain Cook into the ring as the next contestant. Captain Cook in turn, takes advantage of Whizz Kid's enthusiasm and tricks him into going into the ring ahead of him. Whizz Kid readily agrees and dies shortly afterward.

The Doctor and Deadbeat break into the robot repair room where Ace and Bellboy are being held. Bellboy remembers that Deadbeat was once called Kingpin and he led them to this planet searching for something and it all went wrong from there. Deadbeat mutters information about the eye and the Doctor knows he must go back to the well. As they prepare to go, Bellboy stays behind to buy them time as he doesn't care anymore with Flowerchild gone.

The Doctor's group heads to the well where Deadbeat holds up a medallion with an eye on it. Ace recognizes it as something similar she saw at the bus. The Doctor decides that he will stall the circus people while Ace and Deadbeat head to the bus to retrieve the missing piece. Meanwhile the chief clown enters the original locked room but rather than give up the Doctor, Bellboy sets his own robots on him, imploring them to kill him. The chief clown backs out as the robots move in.

Ace and Deadbeat sneak out while the Doctor goes back to the cage. He urges Captain Cook and Mags to enter the ring with him to give them all a better chance. Mags agrees readily but Captain Cook does so reluctantly. Upon entering the ring, the Captain asks for moon spotlight to focus on Mags. The beam causes her to begin to turn into a werewolf. She chases the Doctor and the family is entertained by the affair. As she corners the Doctor, he appeals to her mercy and to fight it. Captain Cook however comes up to urge her on. She then rounds and kills Captain Cook.

Deadbeat and Ace arrive at the old bus. Ace searches while Deadbeat waits outside. She finds a sealed box that she suspects contains the missing piece but cannot open it. Her actions arouse the robot conductor who had been repaired. He attacks her and in doing so, jars open the box. Deadbeat picks up the missing piece and reassembles his medallion. As he does so, his memory returns. He tries to pull the conductor off Ace, but is knocked down. He shouts to Ace to push the button hidden under it's cap. She does so and the robotic conductor explodes.

After Mags recovers, she and the Doctor flee the ring. The family, knowing there are no more acts waiting, demand more entertainment. The Ringmaster and the gypsy protest that they will bring more, but the clowns sweep upon them and disappear them into baskets. The Doctor tells Mags to get to Ace and Kingpin to help them with the medallion. He will stay behind and stall. Mags flees the circus and the clowns gather into their car to chase after her.

The Doctor reenters the circus but separates the layers so that he appears in the family's true time, as the stone gods of Ragnarok. They demand to be entertained and he sets to do so with vaudevillian magic tricks. The gods are not amused but allow him to continue to see if it improves.

Mags reaches Ace and Kingpin and warns them. They see the clowns approaching and Ace gets an idea. She leads them back to the damaged large robot where Ace first met Captain Cook and Mags. She activates it using the remote that Bellboy gave her as the clowns approach. Using it's laser, it destroys the robot clowns and then guns down the head clown. Ace then deactivates the robot and the group takes the car back to the circus.

Arriving back at the circus, the group observes through the gypsy's crystal ball that the Doctor is with the gods. They run to the well but the undead body of Captain Cook follows them. At the well, he knocks down Kingpin and seizes the medallion. Ace and Mags rush him and the medallion falls into the well. The Doctor takes the medallion and uses it to reflect the gods' energy back at them. They become exhausted and collapse, causing the temple to crumble. Captain Cook stumbles and falls into the well as the entire circus begins to shake.

Ace, Mags and Kingpin run clear while the Doctor calmly walks away from circus as it explodes behind him. Kingpin vows to rebuild the circus and invites Mags to help him. He also invites Ace and the Doctor but the Doctor politely declines.

Analysis

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy was the child of necessity but that same freedom produced an interesting story. Studio filming was lost for this story so they made up for it with some old fashioned quarry shooting and an old circus tent. They also got creative with the story, including some very meta moments. Whizz Kid is a very obvious reference to the fans, going so far as to give him lines about not seeing the circus in the early days but still loving it. That the fan representation is shown so much disdain by the other characters and then killed by the family (who feel like a representation of the BBC) does hint rather strongly that the show was growing weary and disdainful of the very thing that was keeping it alive. Still, it was creative and interesting to see a show finally push back a bit from all those that were nibbling it to death.

On the whole, I would have to say that I rather enjoyed this one. It continued to have the problems that one associates with the Seventh Doctor era but they were more muted and allowed a fairly decent story to shine through. My quibbles remain the same as on nearly every Seventh Doctor story: the introduction was a bit muddled with more confusion than mystery to establish things, a somewhat rushed ending where the Doctor suddenly knows something and no explanation given as to where the information came from, and the typical odd cinematography that is a distinction of nearly every 80's show. They couldn't really help the last one so I give that a bit more of a pass.

The use of a tent and silks to disguise the lack of a studio was a rather interesting idea and seemed like a good first step towards the modern show. All parts were played well but I thought the head clown was particularly good. I can understand the general creepiness of clowns, although I don't have a problem with them, but the chief did a very good job in taking what could have been a slightly silly role and becoming genuinely sinister. Even better, he's not shown as being blatantly incompetent as some villains are shown to be. Yes, the protagonists give him the slip here and there, but aside from that, he is rather good at his job and gives a bit of a Joker vibe as he does so.

Aside from the acting, I think the thing I enjoyed most was the camera work. The director did a nice mix of close-ups and tight shots in addition to the standard long shots to both highlight tension and also disguise the location. It was also nice to see an appropriate use of lighting as well. Hallway shots were suitably dark as were other locations which helped to give the story a more dour and sinister mood. This also contrasted nicely with the normal atmosphere of a circus which is generally light and playful.

On the negative end of the scale, I would note the beginning and the end as alluded to earlier. Seventh Doctor stories seem to try and pack a lot of information in at the beginning but they also do it in such a way so as to not reveal anything that often leads the watcher confused. For instance, it was unclear to me throughout Episode One whether Flowerchild had actually be killed or simply knocked out and dragged away. It also seemed odd that no one would every openly admit that the conductor killed her. In fact, I was never really clear on why the bus was guarded unless it was a safeguard to ensure that no one could escape. But I felt more confused than curious, although that lifted as things sped along in Episode Two.

I was also annoyed at two points in the end. First was the quick disposal of the Ringmaster and the gypsy. It would have made more sense to me if they were magicked away but reappeared in the holding cage. But after they disappear in the baskets, they are simply gone as though they have been killed. It seemed like an odd way to dispose of them. I also would have liked to know how the Doctor knew that the entities being entertained were the gods of Ragnarok. That they are powerful alien entities is obvious, but that the Doctor seems to know all about them is never made clear and that annoying. It is another moment where it feels like a bit of exposition or some other scene were cut out. I would have almost preferred the entities to remain unnamed as their actual identities is not important to the story and just have the Doctor deal with them.

But on the whole, those are rather minor quibbles. Ultimately this is an entertaining story with it's flaws being relatively minor compared to the story and performance at large. Knowing the full ending, I'd be curious to watch this one again to see if it makes anything clearer. Ultimately though, each episode kept me curious as to what was going to happen next and how the situation was going to be resolved. The meta jokes also brought an extra layer of entertainment to me as well.

Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5