WHO REVIEW: The War Games in Colour

 

As part of the 60^th anniversary celebrations, the Beeb released The Daleks in Colour, an edited down, colourised omnibus of the second Doctor Who serial (and the earliest one they can currently show, due to an absurd copyright dispute). It wasn't terribly good. So I greeted the news of The War Games in Colour with cautious interest. The War Games is one of the best 60s serials, and while it's overlong, it's entertaining across all ten episodes, which is no mean feat.

Cutting a story down from four hours to ninety minutes means a lot has to go in the bin, even more so when new footage has been generated to swish things up. Still, The War Games is a story with plenty that can be chopped; while the padding is all enjoyable, it's still padding, put in to stretch out a story that had to fill the gap of two late in the day. It's an important story, though: Patrick Troughton's final story; the last of the monochrome era; the introduction of the Time Lords and the Doctor's exile to Earth.

The War Games in Colour, fortunately, works. It's a vast improvement on The Daleks in spite of taking more liberties with the original material. Visually, it's a massive step-up from The Daleks; part of this is down to better quality of the original footage, but a lot of it is down to more consistent and logical colouring work. A large chunk of the story being set in familiar historical locations means that there are realistic colours to try to recreate, but even the alien locales, in the War Games headquarters and Time Lords' capital, a less over-the-top than the Dalek cities while still making the most of the incredibly late-60s psychodelic design.

The music is also an improvement on whatever was going on in The Daleks, with much of the original score surviving, albeit somewhat remixed, although there's still a weird tendency to make some scenes sound like the worst excesses of 80s Who. (This sort of thing has been happening since the 90s patchwork release of Shada.) Musical cues are also used to highlight story connections, in a cheeky but obvious retcon: it's made abundantly clear that the War Chief is now meant to be considered an earlier incarnation of the Master. While the use of both the original Master theme and the Murray Gold one are obtrusive, due to being entirely out of keeping with the rest of the score, I'm completely in favour of the idea. I've always been in the War Chief = Master camp, so it's nice to have some validation of this on screen (with plausible deniability if you don't like the idea).

It's certainly a pacier version of the story, and while this means you can comfortably enjoy it all in one sitting, it also means the story loses a great deal of its original atmosphere. The original serial had a slow build-up of foreboding as the extent of what was happening was revealed, while here everything is explained at breakneck speed. Whole chunks of the story are excised, and while a lot of this is just capture-escape-capture stuff used to bulk the original serial out, it also makes the story and the Aliens' plot seem a lot smaller. Lady Jennifer is scarcely in it now, which is frankly a crime.

The most notable changes come at the story's climax, highlighting an old issue with how The War Games is viewed by fans. We tend to treat the first nine episodes as an extended prologue for the last one, when the Time Lords show up, put the Doctor on trial and sentence him to exile and a change of appearance. With so much of the preceding plot removed, the focus is even more heavily on the ending, with the majority of extra material added here. There's new CGI material throughout, most strikingly a outside look at the Aliens' base, and while it all looks great, it's so clearly of a different style and grade to the original footage that it sticks out like the proverbial tender thumb. This is ratcheted up a notch when we're approaching Gallifrey, making the final scenes feel even more separate to the rest of the story.

The biggest change, of course, is the addition of the regeneration. Originally, all we got was Troughton spinning away into blackness, pulling faces until his image was obscured completely. The net time we saw the Doctor, he was played by Jon Pertwee, tumbling out of the TARDIS at the beginning of Spearhead from Space. Now the entire trial is rejigged – much more effectively, in fact – and the story ends with a full regeneration sequence, put together using archive footage, rendering and new effects. On the whole, it works, and gives the Second Doctor a rather more dignified send-off than he got before. Where this leaves the old “Season 6B” theory is anyone's guess, as there appears to be even less of a gap for the Doctor to nip off for some extra adventuring than there used to be, but entire eras have been shoehorned into less feasible places. The only thing I'm not keen on is the substitution of the Tenth to Thirteenth Doctors for the Doctor's parade of possible faces. Something like it has been done before by fans, of course, but in an official story it's a bit too knowing. (It would have been more fun to stick in photos of some of the actors who were considered to take over from Troughton.)

At the end of the day, though, whether you want to consider this the “real” events of The War Games or ignore it completely is up to you. As an alternative version of the story it works, providing a punchier, far shorter yet still effective adventure, while the 1969 original still sits there, untouched and ready to watch.

WHO REVIEW: Deathworld

Deathworld is the first Big Finish release I've been excited for for quite a while. The latest in The Lost Stories range, this is based on a story treatment submitted by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, classic Who's big ideas men, for Doctor Who's tenth season. It never got further than that, being scrapped in favour of their second idea, which became The Three Doctors. It's very similar to the broadcast story in many ways: all (then) three Doctors appear, the Time Lords are involved, UNIT HQ is beseiged, and the Doctors and their companions are sent to another world outside of their reality.

It's a far more esoteric adventure, however. Instead of facing a disembodied Time Lord in a universe of antimatter, the Doctor is forced to battle Death himself, in his realm beyond time. It's a wonderfully out there idea for Doctor Who, and I've long been fascinated by it as a road not taken. It wouldn't have been completely out of place back in season ten - only one story before the Doctor fought the Minotaur in Atlantis and stood in the vortex facing a god that ate time itself, and in the sixties there were occasional trips beyond reality, to the Land of Fiction of the Celestial Toyroom. Now, of course, the idea of the Doctor facing the Grim Reaper in the afterlife doesn't seem unlikely at all, in the series' new "gods and monsters" phase.

From the sounds of it, this is one of those Lost Stories where there was little more than an outline to go from, so BF writer John Dorney has basically created the entire script from scratch. It's great work; it fair zips along, with the occasional quieter to focus on loss and the philosophy of death. The dialogue is, for the most part, very strong; only once do the characters fall into the trap of describing what they're seeing instead of reacting to it, which makes it better than a lot of BF scripts. Dorney peppers the script with little references to other adventures (the First Doctor asking if the Brigadier is related to Bret Vyon was fun), and his use of the odd phrase or paraphrase from The Three Doctors itself seems appropriate, given that surely some of Baker and Martin's material would have ended up in either version.

There are some irritating bits. Having the different Doctors discovering the same thing then reporting to each other gets repetitive. Why the Brigadier refers to himself as such, instead of his actual name, is a mystery, although this is far from the first story to include that. Looking at the story itself, while it's fun to have the First Doctor and the Brig team up, and it's something we never got to see on TV, it's also a shame one of the First Doctor's companions doesn't take part. This is, I presme, due to who the production team thought they could get involved at the time.

Indeed, they were pretty overconfident there, since in the event Frazer Hines was unavailable to play Jamie, while Hartnell was too unwell to be involved fully, necessitating some serious rewriting. It's wonderful to be able to hear a full team-up of the first three Doctors, their different personalities brought into focus by their interactions with Jamie, Jo and the Brig, as they're busy sniping at each other. Using Death as the antagonist is a clever way to frame the meeting of different Doctors; as they discuss, they are to each other a reminder of their mortality, albeit a very different kind of mortality to humanity's. 

Interestingly, the story involved a number of elements that, by coincidence, appeared in the latest season on TV. While the version of Death here is miles away from Sutekh as God of Death, they fundementally come from the same idea. There are more specific moments that line up; there's even an army tricked into fighting itself. Other parts are hard to imagine televised Doctor Who fully committing to then or now; armies of zombies would either push the boundaries of what the programme could get away with, or be so neutered for the teatime slot as to be pointless. It's one of these time when audio is a benefit; we can let our imaginations run wild, without concern for budget or viewer sensibilities.

There is, however, a fundamental drawback to this whole endeavour. Since the first three Doctors are now long dead, Big Finish relies on its squadron of impersonators to recreate them for this story. Stephen Noonan stands in for William Hartnell; Michael Troughton for his father Patrick; and Tim Treloar is now well-established as Jon Pertwee's understudy. As well as the Doctors, Jon Culshaw portrays the Brigadier in place of the late Nick Courtney. Happily, Frazer Hines and Katy Manning are still with us, but it does make for a strangely distant experience. It does fit with the theme of death and loss, though, and for the most part, the impressions are strong. At times, they're uncannily accurate, while other times they're wildly off, but they're mainly solid so it doesn't detract from the story.

Hats off to Joe Shire as Death himself, as well as his three fellow apocalyptic horsemen. He gives a powerful, sinister, yet oddly avuncular performance as the personification of Death. Joe's got a number of Big Finish credits to his name now (notably he's a regular in Torchwood Soho), but his first turn as main villain is a triumph. Good work, Uncle Joe! Dianne Pilkington gives a good performance against him as the overconfident Lady President of Gallifrey.

The climax to the story does fall under the somewhat frustrating category that undoes the adventure, but it doesn't feel like a cop-out, unlike some. In this case, it's in keeping with the dream-like, otherworldly nature of the story. I'm not keen on the range's continued insistence to force its releases into existing continuity, clumsily segueing here into The Three Doctors. It's far better to let these "what if?" stories remain in their own, unique little universes. Still, it doesn't undo what is a fun adventure, and one that worth waiting for through the recent delays.

Placement: As Dorney has gone to pains to fit this into established continuity, we might as well have a try. As previously noted, for the Third Doctor, Jo and the Brigadier, this leads directly into The Three Doctors. 

For the Second Doctor and Jamie, it's a little trickier. They're one their way to pick up Victoria, and Jamie mentions experiments by the Sontarans, clearly setting this after The Two Doctors. However, neither of them recognises the Brigadier, so from their perspective it's also before The Web of Fear. This means that The Two Doctors takes place during season five, rather than after season six and the Doctor's trial, where most fans place it. This is probably the work of script editor Simon Guerrier, who took this stance in his audioplay The Black Hole, which dialogue suggests follows this straight after. Funnily enough, The Black Hole was a working title for The Three Doctors. If this is right after The Two Doctors, Jamie has met three extra incarnations of the Doctor in a matter of days.

The First Doctor mentions going to find Steven, so for him, this is presumably between The Daleks' Masterplan and The Massacre. 

WHO REVIEW ROUND-UP: SHORT TRIPS

Before I get on with the review of the very exciting new release The Ninth Doctor Adventures, I thought I'd step back and review some of the releases in the Short Trips series I've enjoyed lately, including two adventures for the Ninth Doctor from prior to Eccleston's return to the role.

BATTLE SCARS

First we go back to series nine of Short Trips, from 2019, for the first appearance of the Ninth Doctor in the range. Written by Selim Ulug, who joined Big Finish's roster of writers on the strength of his winning entry in the Paul Spraggs Memorial Story Competition, it's one of those stories designed to plug a hole in the canon. Back in "Rose," we saw a picture of the Ninth Doctor with the Daniels family, who'd mysteriously not travelled out on the Titanic and lost their lives in 1912."Battle Scars" tells that story, with the Doctor arriving almost literally on the Daniels' doorstep, injured and insensible. 

We find the Doctor very soon after the Time War and his regeneration, possibly right afterwards. It could easily have been nothing more than a fanwanky gap-filler, and while there's nothing wrong with that, it's far more. There are elements of this, of course, with the Doctor even picking up his "Fantastic!" catch phrase, but it's fundamentally an exploration of the futility of war, the damage it causes to an individual and others in their lives, and the difficulty of moving on. There's an extraterrestrial influence as well, but that's just colour. Young Connie, the pseudo-companion for the story, is the standout character. Like all BF's Ninth Doctor stories until Eccleston returned, this is narrated by Nick Briggs, who gives as solid a reading as we've come to expect. His Ninth Doctor is sometimes dead on, sometimes a bit parodic, but overall one of the better stand-in Doctors. Altogether, an excellent trip.

Placement: Very soon after The Day of the Doctor.

HER OWN BOOTSTRAPS

Onto series ten from 2020, and we have another Ninth Doctor story, this one by Amy Veeres. This one tidies up some trailing continuity threads from "Rose" as well, looking at why the Doctor was at Krakatoa just before it erupted (both Krakatoa and the Titanic have been visited by so many iterations of the Doctor and other time travellers it's amazing there's room for any actual historical people at either event). However, it's mostly a standalone story which sees the Doctor tidying up after the Time War and trying to prevent a young scientist from being remembered as a terrible war criminal. Althea Bryce actually ends up being a quasi-companion character, and while it's all wrapped up in a neat paradox, it's a fairly strong character piece.

Placement: Not long after "Battle Scars," with both thematically linked by having the Doctor clean up old Time War weapons. Authorial intent puts the final scene with Rose just after "The Long Game."

DELETED SCENES

Stepping back from the revived series is this Second Doctor story from the tenth run of shorts, a charming little story of fin de siecle filmmaking. It's 1908 and the Doctor and Jamie have arrived in gay Paris, stumbling into the life of one Celine Tessier. Naturally, anyone from such a fine and storied lineage is a boon to any story and it's long overdue that a Tessier is the centre of a Doctor Who adventure. More tragic events lead on from the first meeting, in a gentle but affecting story by Angus Dunican. Cinematic pioneer George Melies also has a major role in the story, and it outdoes "Her Own Bootstraps" by having an entirely different Doctor follow up on events in the epilogue.

Placement: The Doctor is travelling with only Jamie and no lady companion, so presumably between Fury from the Deep and The Wheel in Space, unless it's much later on in the "Season 6-B" era.

FREE SPEECH

Finally we have the last story from series ten, Eugenie Pusenjak's winning entry in last year's Paul Spragg Memorial contest. It's a high concept science fiction story which sees the Tenth Doctor arrive on the planet Skaz, where speaking costs money. Pusenjak takes this seemingly simple concept and explores its every repurcussion. The primary character Aymius finds himself under arrest, having to recount the events of the story under interrogation, but rapidly running out of funds to do so. While he tries to keep things concise and not waste words, if his account runs dry he will be automatically silenced by a tongue chip, a catastrophic result in his situation.

It's an ingenious conceit that allegorises how the voices of the poor are ignored while those of the rich and powerful are always heard. It's a thoughtful but pacey story which sees the Doctor as the instigator of change but doesn't pretend that he has overturned the status quo himself. Jacob Dudman, the main man when it comes to 21st century Doctors for BF, gives a strong and spirited reading of an excellent story.

Placement: Could pretty much happen anywhere when the Tenth Doctor is travelling alone, but dialogue hints it might be shortly before "Smith and Jones" since the Doctor mentions an adventure with Benjamin Franklin in both.

LOCKDOWN - Doctors Assemble!

This one is right on the cusp of being a Fans Who review. Naturally, a complete multi-Doctor extravaganza like this is going to need some impersonators, but this is almost all impersonators. Two of them - Jacob Dudman, who does the Eleventh Doctor (perfectly) and Jon Culshaw (who does the Third, Fourth and Fifth Doctors) - have performed as stand-in Doctors for Big Finish. Other than that, the only bona fide Doctor is David Bradley, who's the third First Doctor on the TV series, and since he was cast for his physical resemblance to Hartnell, he actually sounds the least like the original Doctor. Bradley's involved, of course, because this is a semi-anniversary show to tie-in with the watch-along of An Adventure in Space and Time. Did they try to get any more "real" Doctors? We know at least some of them would be up for it.

But still, this is great. The most ambitious of the Lockdown stories so far, organised by Emily Cook, with fourteen Doctors all chatting at each other in the TARDIS. At fifteen minutes, there's barely a plot, but that's not the point. This is tremendous fun. Everything from the recycled classic lines to the brilliant profile pics for each Doctor. The empty shelves of toilet paper behind the War Doctor is just hilarious. "No more," indeed. Some of the impressions are better than others, but they're all good enough to sell it. Other than the semi-official guys, Chris Walker-Thomson's Second Doctor and Jonathon Carley's War Doctor are probably the best, but everyone makes a good Doctor. James Goss knows how to write a funny Who story, and this is right up his street. Just lovely.

Watch it here and enjoy!

WHO REVIEW: The Legacy of Time

While Big Finish Productions started producing audioplays in 1998 (with the adaptation of the Bernice Summerfield New Adventure Oh No It Isn't!), it was in July 1999 that the released their first Doctor Who production, The Sirens of Time, on CD and audio cassette. Twenty years later, when even CDs seem a bit archaic and most people download their purchases, BF has released their own anniversary celebratory box set featuring a spread of Doctors, companions, favourite characters and time-twisting shenanigans. SPOILERS will follow in this review of the gigantic six-hour collection.






I've been a bit disappointed in BF's reliance on the same handful of writers and recurring cast, it makes sense for an event project to be placed in reliable hands. Ken Bentley directs all but one episode and by its nature, this features a host of recognisable voices playing familiar characters. The set involves six very separate stories which are linked by a general theme of things going wrong with time, all of which are eventually linked together in a just-about coherent fashion. The overall plot is basically irrelevant, though – the fun is in the individual adventures and the cross-pollination of various Doctors and spin-off casts.

LIES IN RUINS by James Goss

The set kicks off, appropriately enough, with Bernice Summerfield hard at work in the field. She's joined by River Song, who has of late been enjoying her own series of adventures in The Diary of River Song, where she has encountered various incarnations of the Doctor, and latterly, the Master, in flagrant defiance of continuity or logic. Given that River is essentially a combination of the two great heroines of the Wilderness Years, Benny Summerfield and Iris Wildthyme, it makes sense that she should finally meet one of them. (River meets Iris is one story that I'm dying to hear.)

Having two time-travelling archaeologists could have been an exercise in redundancy, but Alex Kingston and Lisa Bowerman have a great chemistry that balances finely between catty one-upmanship and bawdy companionship. It's a bit like when Rose and Sarah Jane fought over the tenth Doctor, only to bond over their mutual experiences of travelling with him. River has one up on Benny, having actually married the Doctor rather than simply been very good friends indeed, but they rub along together surprisingly well once the Doctor turns up.

The eighth Doctor is the version who arrives in the story, but he's not the version either Benny or River remember. Benny, of course, mostly encountered this Doctor in the earlier days of his life, while River, while meeting him in the latter years, still found him in generally good spirits. This is a tired, angry Doctor, though, one who's very, very close to becoming the Doctor of War. When confronted by a very personal threat, he comes closer than ever before to turning the corner from hero to warrior. It's not merely their shared affection for the Doctor that brings River and Benny together though, but also their mutual dislike of his new companion, the impossibly bubbly Ria (named for the companion in the old, pre-BF Audio Visuals range, and played with rambunctious energy by Alexandria Riley).

As good as the ladies are, though, it's Paul McGann's performance that really blows the competition away. This is a Doctor who's lost his faith in the universe after seeing it torn apart in the Time War, who, in the words of River, has lived a very long time indeed. It's a funny thing that the Doctor we saw the least of on TV (of the main incarnations) is the one whose borne one of the longest and most traumatic lives.

THE SPLIT INFINITIVE by John Dorney

The second story jumps back an incarnation for a story that sees characters from the eighties during the sixties and seventies. BF's Countermeasures series – one I haven't explored much, unlike The Diary of River Song – has featured the special operations team from 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, in their natural home of the 1960s, and latterly regrouped in the 1970s. “The Split Infinitive” hedges its bets by being set in both decades, utilising the running concept of time anomalies to tie the two periods together in ingenious fashion. Cue lines along the lines of “meanwhile, ten years earlier...” as events in one period influence the other and vice versa.

Sly McCoy rrrrollls and rrroarrs through the adventure, while Ace hops back and takes care of events in the further past. They're both completely at ease in their characters after all these years, although McCoy's performance is still as idiosyncratic as ever. The Countermeasures team are a solid troop of characters, but it's Pamela Salem's Professor Jensen who stands out for me – she's an actress of pure class. Dorney's script brings in the Rocketmen, BF's own brand of recurring space gangsters, who work perfectly in the retro setting, although they are a bit too similar to the also-ran baddies that appear in the first episode. There is, however, a gorgeous joke put in just to explain the unending nonsense around UNIT dating.

THE SACRIFICE OF JO GRANT by Guy Adams

Episode three is an exercise in nostalgia, one that could have been saccharine but is actually rather beautiful and moving. BF's UNIT series is another one that's been going for donkey's years, on and off, and lately has been updated to include not only the Moffat-era UNIT team of Kate Stewart and Osgood, but also Katy Manning as Jo Jones. This (slightly misnomered) episode sees Mrs Jones and Ms Stewart pulled back in time to the Pertwee era.

As with “The Split Infinitive,” this episode involves a story split across two points in history, this time on the Jurassic coast. Yes, there are great sea dragons wrenched from prehistory by the temporal disturbances (good idea, that). Plot is secondary here, though, with this story hinging on the emotional interplay between the characters. I certainly didn't expect a highlight of this box set to be the Doctor and Jo chatting over a pub lunch.

I've been a bit sniffy about Tim Treloar's turn as the third Doctor, but it sounds like he's lately really gotten a hold of the role. There are moments in this episode where he's absolutely dead on Pertwee, although there are others where he drifts pretty far away. Regardless, hearing Jo catch up with her Doctor is a beautiful thing. Nevertheless, the most affecting moment is Kate taking a brief but moving phone call from her late father (recreated here by Jon Culshaw), and god, that was beautiful.

RELATIVE TIME by Matt Fitton

“The Doctor's Daughter” was a dreadful episode, but it did introduce a character who clearly had more potential than the episode explored. “Relative Time” brings back Jenny Anomaly, fresh from her own BF series about a year ago. Georgia Tennant (nee Moffett) is of course the real life daughter of Peter Davison, and having the sort-of daughter of the Doctor share a story with her actual father is, of course, irresistible. They have, in fact, appeared together in a BF Doctor Who before, 2000's Red Dawn, Georgia's first acting role I believe.

In “Relative Time,” she plays Jenny as a lively, adventurous, exciting character, heavily drawing on the performance of David Tennant as the Doctor. So, we basically have someone working with her dad while playing her husband. Still, it works, and the interplay between the more fuddy-duddy fifth Doctor and the boisterous Jenny is a lot of fun. It's always good to hear the snarky side of the fifth Doctor come out, as well, and he's in a dreadful mood for a lot of this story.

The episode see the insane Time Lord known as the Nine attempt a grand heist. This is, of course, an earlier version of the Eleven, the villain of the Doom Coalition box sets with McGann. While I'm not entirely sure if a character who continually reverts to his own earlier incarnations needs to be portrayed in earlier regenerations, I really enjoyed John Heffernan's posh kleptomaniac. He's got his own sidekick in the form of Thana, an immortal ne'er-do-well played by Ronni Ancona. It's a bit of silliness that has time for a few poignant moments between father and daughter, but mostly, it's just a lot of fun.

THE AVENUES OF POSSIBILITY by Jonathan Morris

The fifth instalment of the set was originally to have been a Jago & Litefoot story, but the death of Trevor Baxter necessitated a major rethink. Jonathan Morris has come up with an ingenious idea, of alleyways that lead from the past to variant futures, and as he says in the behind-the-scenes interview, it's something that could spawn a ten-part epic. Here, though, it's mostly used as a way to up the ante as the time anomalies threaten to turn British history into a fascist nightmare, and remind that there by the grace of god we go.

In place of the Victorian sleuths, the sixth Doctor is accompanied by Charley Pollard, formerly companion to his next-incarnation-but-one, and DI Patricia Menzies. These characters first appeared together in the 2008 release The Condemned, and it's bizarre to think that this radical mix-up of a later companion and an earlier Doctor happened over a decade ago. It's still a lot of fun to hear Anna Hope's broad Mancunian police officer join forces with India Fisher's posho Edwardian adventurer.

Acting as pseudo-companions are John and Henry Fielding, (Richard Hansell and Duncan Wisbey), who ground the story in some kind of rationality. I knew Henry Fielding as the author of Tom Jones and was only peripherally aware of his role as the founder of the first modern police force, but I was completely clueless as to his brother John. This was a man who revolutionised social justice and became a respected magistrate after he was blinded as a teenager. He could even, it is said, recognise the criminals of London by the sounds of their voices. This is someone who deserves far more exploration than this relatively short adventure can allow.

COLLISION COURSE by Guy Adams
The final story in the set has to pay double duty as both the fourth Doctor adventure and the obligatory multi-Doctor knees-up. Respect to BF for not making this another full-on multi-Doctor story with the Daleks and the Master causing trouble, as might have been expected. The eventual meeting of all the Doctors to save the day is only the climax to the story, and Tom Baker gets a fairly decent story to himself, but it's easy to overlook it in all the subsequent excitement. We do, however, get a rather lovely celebration of the varied nature of the fourth Doctor era, with both Louise Jameson and Lalla Ward returning as Leela and Romana respectively. The unlikely pairing have become a great double-act over the years in the Gallifrey series, and here we have them both remembering a trip with the Doctor to the planet Henlen; however, the details of their journeys are heavily at odds.

The overarching story reaches its head with temporal anomalies and jostling timelines running out of control. It's all down to the nefarious Sirens of Time, returning from the very first BF Doctor Who adventure, something that feels quite right and proper. Tied into this is the vital journey of the first ever TARDIS, a turning point for the history of the entire universe and a moment ripe for pardoxes and cosmic catastrophe. It's fannish as hell but there's nothing wrong with that in anniversary story, and the climax, while silly in the extreme, is punch-the-air good fun. While it's a trifle hard to swallow Benny being dragged into it again, seemingly just because she's so important to BF rather than any sensible story reason, it's a good excuse to have her meet Leela and Romana plus multiple other Doctors. (At the end of this story and including all media I think she's clocked up eleven distinct incarnations, even more than River.)

It's all an excuse, really, to get as many Doctors together in one room as possible. The proto-TARDIS needs six Gallifreyan pilots, so Romana needs a crew, and all six incarnations of the Doctor from earlier in the set turn up. What's even more indulgent, yet tremendously welcome, is a drop-in cameo from three more. I won't say the actors involved, but one played a villain on the series, one played a companion, and one is married to another star of this box set. It's all rather joyous and sends this very pick-and-mix release out on a high.

WHO REVIEW: The Lost Stories 4.3-4.4

LORDS OF THE RED PLANET

THE MEGA

Among the mad rush of events that overtook the world of Doctor Who at the end of 2013, Big Finish reached the end of its Lost Stories range. Originally created to bring the unmade 1986 season of Doctor Who to life, later series moved beyond the adventures of the sixth Doctor, recreating unmade serials for the Doctors from Billy Hartnell through to Sly McCoy. The fourth and final run has reached its culmination with two six-part adventures, one for the second Doctor and one for the third. Naturally, each of these is in the enhanced audiobook type of format, somewhere between a reading and a performance. Indeed, these two releases are as close to a full-cast performance as you can get with several key cast members no longer extant.


Lords of the Red Planet is the gloriously named third and final story drawn from the archived notes of Brian Hayles, following the previous releases The Dark Planet and The Queen of Time . It involves the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie arriving on Mars and becoming witness to nothing less than the creation of the Ice Warriors. With the genesis of the Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans all now established, it's not surprising that the Martian menaces would get there own treatment eventually. What is more unexpected is that this was actually proposed right back in 1969, intended to be the second appearance of the creatures. In the event, The Seeds of Death was made in its place. It's hard to say which was actually the stronger story; what we have here is not a final script, but is based on two slightly different draft treatments by Hayles. John Dorney has done a good job of crafting them into a cohesive story. The performances are uniformly good, although Nick Briggs does overstretch himself a little by adding even more alien voices to his roster.


Where the serial falls down is in its length, something it has in common with many Troughton stories. It's a more interesting concept than what we got in The Seeds of Death, but perhaps a less televisually exciting one. It certainly would have been expensive to produce, with the sheer numbers of Martians of various stripes being a likely reason it was vetoed. Hayles paints a picture of Mars that sees it as a dying planet inhabited by the last vestiges of a once powerful culture, driven to indolence and marking time till their extinction. The Gandorans are the architects of their own maltreatment at the hands of their genetically enhanced mistress, and the ensuing power struggle has an air of inevitability to it. The actual origins of the Ice Warriors, accidentally christened as such by the Doctor here, is intriguing. There was always a sense that there was something artificial about them, yet they are clearly organic. Here we learn that they are forcibly evolved and technologically upgraded, transforming them from mere beasts to a powerful fighting force. A martial culture in both senses, then, and destined to inherit the planet. How easily this account fits with other tales of Ice Warrior history is harder to say, but given that this is penned by the real-world creator of the creatures, it should perhaps be considered the truest history.


I found The Mega rather less enjoyable to listen to. The first, and only, third Doctor release for the Lost Stories range, this one comes from a treatment by Bill Strutton, author of intergalactic bug-fest The Web Planet. It's at the same time a talky piece and an action-oriented one. It takes an age to get going, and once it does, it never really manages to do the action justice. Hailing from the hinterland between seasons seven and eight, The Mega is a story in the gritty, near-future style of The Ambassadors of Death. It's the plausible future from the point of view of a writer in the 1970s, with plenty of international political action, then-topical references and corrupt officials, with a hefty does of high-concept science fiction mixed in. It probably would have looked fantastic on television. The problem being that neither the action setpieces nor the bizarre, extraterrestrials (the Mega themselves) come across terribly well on audio. Simon Guerrier stresses that this was the toughest script assignment he's had, and it shows. I'm just not convinced this story was well chosen for adaptation to audio, particularly in light of the death of so many of the original cast. Both Richard Franklin and Katy Manning do their best, but it doesn't really come off. As much as I adore Manning, and as much as others have praised her attempt at Pertwee, her im-Pert-onation just doesn't work for me either.



While both the Lost Stories and the Companion Chronicles ranges are now over or winding up, Big Finish intend to move forward with an Early Adventures series. While the gradual development of these releases has shown that there is clearly a way that stories for the first three Doctors can still be produced, there are still some kinks to be ironed out. Although the Troughton stories have been largely successful, Pertwee adventures are harder to get right, something that is true both in the Companion Chronicles line and The Mega. With the sad loss of Elisabeth Sladen, Nick Courtney and Caroline John in recent years, this vibrant era of Doctor Who is slipping out of our grasp and may never truly be recreated.

WHO REVIEW: The Lost Stories 4.1-4.2

4.1 THE DARK PLANET

The final series of Lost Stories is comprised of four releases, three of which come from the imagination of Brian Hayles. The creator of the Ice Warriors submitted numerous outlines to the Doctor Who production office, many of which were reproduced in the third issue if Nothing at the End of the Lane last year. Calling these Lost Stories really is stretching the definition. There must have been thousands of dismissed subs over the years, and to call every napkin scribbling a Lost Story is hyperbole. The audioplays here are not the work of Brian Hayles, but original stories based on his brief outlines that never got as far as a script back in the day, and probably for very good reasons.


Still, there is much to enjoy in these new pseudo-Lost Stories. The first release, The Dark Planet, comes from the early days of the series, featuring Ian, Barbara and Vicki alongside the first Doctor. William Russell and Maureen O'Brien get a rare chance to perform together, and both are just as good as they ever were. Naturally, they both sound considerably older these days, but O'Brien recreates Vicki with enough enthusiasm to overcome this. Russell, on the other hand, is sounding very advanced in years, and if anything, is rather better at portraying the elderly Doctor now than Ian Chesterton. Indeed, he sounds like he's altogether more enthused with this role, and it's no surprise that Big Finish elected to use him as their ersatz first Doctor in the anniversary special The Light at the End. As with previous Lost Stories from the sixties, the lack of key cast members necessitates a talking book approach, with both Russell and O'Brien providing charming and spirited narration.


The story of The Dark Planet sees the TARDIS arrive on an ancient world circling a dying sun, millions of years ago in the dawn days of the universe. Hayles would have submitted this story when The Web Planet was being broadcast, and it is similarly ambitious in its scope. It's not hard to see why it was rejected; the visual requirements for the story would have been hard to achieve indeed. The beings of the dark planet have evolved into two separate strands, beings of light and beings of shadow, each with their own adaptations and powers. It's hard to see how this would have been convincingly portrayed on a 1960s Doctor Who budget, although I'm certain the creative team would have done their utmost to make it happen. No, it is a story perhaps best suited to audio, where the imagination can fill in the gaps. A particular scene, in which the radiance of the light beings' innermost sanctum renders our heroes blind, is deeply unnerving when related verbally, but would have been a challenge to make into something visually effective.


The Dark Planet features a small guest cast, with John Banks portraying the Shadows and Charlie Norfolk the people of light. Both Big Finish veterans, they do what they can with the roles, but the material is thin. The aliens are concepts, not characters, and struggle to make much impression. An undercurrent of racialism, equating the light and shadow folk with white and black people, is hinted at, but never developed. Instead, we get the now hoary cliché of the seemingly benevolent beautiful people of light turning out to be worse than the supposedly savage creatures of shadow. It's the same moral we were presented with in Galaxy 4, and had this been broadcast, one can assume the latter serial would not, for there really isn't room for the pair of them. Like many sixties stories, The Dark Planet is very slow, and while the audio format works in its favour, it's hard to muster much enthusiasm for this.

4.2 THE QUEEN OF TIME

The second story, The Queen of Time, sees Hayles plundering his own back catalogue for inspiration. This story is pretty much a blatant remake of The Celestial Toymaker. At least Hayles goes as far as to admit it, revealing in the closing moments, that Hecuba, the eponymous Queen of Time, is the Toymaker's half-sister. It certainly makes you wonder about their parentage. Like the Toymaker, Hecuba revels in games, and captures poor, unfortunate souls to partake in them. There is some originality though. As befits her title, Hecuba has the ability to manipulate time, and thus all her games are in some way temporally themed. She also displays a deep sexuality, something that makes her stand out from most Doctor Who villains, particularly the rare female ones. Caroline Faber is excellent as Hecuba, giving a truly rich performance as the desperate goddess.


Indeed, it's the cast who really save this one. The use of Jamie and Zoe brings to mind the similarly fantastical serial The Mind Robber; Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury totally inhabit their old characters. Of particular note is Hines, once again impressing with his pitch perfect portrayal of the second Doctor. There really are moments when you can believe Patrick Troughton had recorded thee lines. And what a treat it would have been to see him do this one, flirting with Hecuba to keep her sweet, forced to sit through a truly revolting repast at her banquet table.


However, while The Dark Planet benefitted from the audio format, The Queen of Time suffers from the lack of a visual element. Like its celestial predecessor, it's a very visual adventure, and no amount of colourful description or clever sound design can quite make up for that. Nonetheless, this is a better story than The Celestial Toymaker, and Catherine Harvey has done a fine job penning a script from Hayles's original treatment. For one thing, the rather racist tone of the earlier serial and its mysterious Mandarin is absent, and Harvey has explicitly removed the sexist elements of the Queen's character. The original write-up included the gem that, like “most women,” Hecuba thinks science is “all magic really.”


If anything, this story would have worked better being made when it was originally submitted. Three years after the broadcast of The Celestial Toymaker, memories of the serial and its antagonist would have been vague but just enough for a sequel to be viable. Now, with the soundtrack readily available, it seems less fresh. However, I for one would opt to listen to The Queen of Time if given the choice between the two.


The final series of The Lost Stories will conclude with another Hayles pitch, The Lords of the Red Planet, and Bill Strutton's submission The Mega.

WHO REVIEW: The Light at the End

Let's admit it, chaps and chapettes – it's getting exciting now! The fiftieth anniversary is almost upon us, and Big Finish has released its own celebratory get together a month early, the devils. While the TV series is focusing, quite sensibly, on the 21^st century Doctors, fans who want to see the elder Doctors represented can rest assured that Big Finish has done us all proud with The Light at the End.


BF supremo Nicholas Briggs has spoken of his reluctance to go for a multi-Doctor team-up. This is understandable, of course; balancing the needs of multiple leads and all their companions with a coherent, diverting storyline isn't easy. Big Finish has quite some history with multi-Doctor stories. Briggs himself kicked off the range with The Sirens of Time, which took the fifth, sixth and seventh Doctors, then BF's entire roster, and built a fun but flawed story around them. Each Doctor had an episode, with a finale that teamed them all up to save Gallifrey. For the fortieth anniversary, BF took a different tactic, with Zagreus using the unusual idea of bringing Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sly McCoy in to support Paul McGann's eighth Doctor, but as new characters. The subscriber special The Four Doctors was more straightforward, with Doctors five to eight all taking part in a time-crossing adventure, before a brief fan-pleasing get-together at the end, while Project: Lazarus gave us a rather peculiar Six/Seven team-up.


The Light at the End is a little more traditional in its set-up. It's essentially a new Five Doctors, bringing together the five extant 20^th century Doctors together. There's plenty of interaction between the various Doctors, and while the story understandably focuses on the surviving Doctors, the first three incarnations are featured. Though separated from their successors, the first three Doctors do take part in proceedings, mostly appearing as phantoms to the rest of the characters. Big Finish's solution to the lack of the original actors is one that will divide fans, to be sure, but it is, on the whole, successful, and it wouldn't seem right to not have the characters included. The degree to which these Doctor stand-ins will convince listeners is variable, but they ultimately pull it off, and bump this five Doctor team-up to include all eight of the old gents.


The story for Light is, understandably, straightforward, despite the transtemporal shenanigans. The Master, in his pre-Traken form, purchases the services of the Vess, a rather Dalek-like race of intergalactic arms dealers. Using their ultimate weapon, the nature of which is rather ingenious, the Master causes the TARDIS to collapse in on itself, causing the Doctor's timeline to collapse inwards with it. When the various Doctor are first made aware of the threat when a mysterious red light appears in their TARDISes, as they pass through a particular point in space and time. They each track it back to Totton, Hants, on the 23^rd of November, 1963. Yet only the fifth Doctor manages to reach Totton, with the others being diverted into a peculiar pocket universe. How these supposedly disparate locations fit together is rather clever, and the crux of the Master's plan.


To begin with, the Doctors are kept separate, gradually pairing off before all eight of them come together for the grand finale. The fifth Doctor and Nyssa are able to reach the house at Totton, the location that is mysteriously linked to the unfolding events. Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton are perfect as usual as an older, more mature version of their televisual team, quietly investigating the mystery that has affected Bob Dovie. John Dorney is excellent as Bob, a perfectly ordinary man whose life is torn apart by the sudden intrusion of the Doctor and Master into his life. There's even an appearance by young Benedict Briggs, son of Nicholas, as Bob's offspring Kevin. It's rather cute, but events become unsettling very quickly in this spooky section of the story.


The fourth and eighth Doctors, and their respective companions, get to team up against the Master, and the result is joyous. The two Doctor who we never thought we'd get back, and here they are, bouncing along together, two gorgeous voices in conversation. Their Doctors get on marvellously, with the exception of a little fashion critique, and the actors have some real chemistry. If there's ever the chance of a further team-up with these particular Doctors, I'd buy it in a heartsbeat. The companions are just as good, with India Fisher's Charley and Louise Jameson's Leela sharing some fun scenes. It's just lovely stuff.


The other pair-up, between Doctors number six and seven, is also very successful. There's something extra appealing about having a Doctor dealing with his immediate successor, especially when it's the exuberant sixth Doctor meeting the more subdued seventh. Nicola Bryant doesn't get too much to do as Peri, but she has some good chemistry with Ace, and gives McCoy a gently moving moment as he comments on the strange feeling of meeting long lost friends. Sophie Aldred gets a treat of a scene as Ace. Not only does she give us the funniest moment of the play with her rundown of the various Doctors (“Old Man White Hair, Beetles Haircut...”), she's fantastic partnered with Colin Baker. It's strange to hear Ace with another Doctor – for some reason, it's hard to imagine her with anyone but McCoy – but she's well matched by Colin Baker. The temporal ghosting as the TARDIS collapses lets us hear some other companions too, with almost everyone that Big Finish still has at their disposal making at least a brief contribution.


Geoffrey Beevers is wonderful as the Master, but that's no surprise. His silkily sinister tones are perfect for the audio version of the Doctor's oldest enemy. While his successor once opined that “a universe without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about,” this severely damaged version of the Master is fuelled by nothing more than desperation and cold, agonising hatred. He's a particularly nasty piece of work, and using the instantly recognisable villain as the threat for this story save time. It's a strong, streamlined story, well structured, cleverly revisiting the same events from alternative viewpoints. Plus, we get to hear the eighth Doctor face the Master again, which has been a long time coming.



Finally, all eight Doctors come together to solve the Master's plot, but naturally, it's the original who finally cracks it. The eventual solution is a little pat, and might irritate some listeners as it undoes much of what we've just heard. However, it works, and leads to a very funny epilogue. This is a corking adventure, balancing all the Doctors better than ever expected. A well made, well written story that celebrates all eras of the series prior to the great relaunch, The Light at the End is an absolute treat.

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary teaser trailer

Just in case there's anyone out there who hasn't seen it yet, here's the special teaser for the upcoming anniversary special The Day of the Doctor.


So, what do we all think? I loved it, although some of the Doctors get short shrift. The CGI Hartnell at the beginning is wonderful, as is the hi-res Tom Baker, but the decision to use a lookey-likey for Pertwee is a bit odd (he's already been dubbed the 'Impertwonator'). It certainly looks like it's intended to be shown in 3D, so I expect it to turn up in cinema trails soon. It's very exciting though, and really whets the appetite for the special.

There are also lots of little extras to spot in the video. See how many, and then check out what you might have missed here.

WHO REVIEW: The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear

And to think we got overexcited by the discovery of two orphaned episodes of monochrome Doctor Who last year. It's truly one of the great finds – two sixties serials, one complete, one very nearly, discovered in, of all places, Jos, Nigeria. All credit to Philip Morris for his diligence and, indeed, bravery, in travelling throughout Africa in search of archived television materials. This trip really paid off. While the rumours did get out of hand – absurd claims that all missing episodes had been found were doing the rounds – it is the greatest single find of lost Doctor Who material since the archive purges began. Tremendous work by the BBC in keeping their secret. I was particularly dubious about the whole thing; usually, the greater the claims, the less likely they are to be true. For these episodes to have been restored to broadcast standard and made ready for download so quickly is also worthy of praise. One small gripe: while I enthusiastically downloaded the serials from iTunes, they really should have been made freely available in the UK. We have paid for them once, after all.


While the recovery of any two serials would have been met with celebration, to get two such excellent entries in the series makes it a real treat. The Enemy of the World hasn't the greatest reputation, something best ascribed to the previous sole available episode, the third, being a rather slow, filler instalment. The soundtrack has always promised a rather good story, albeit one that really needed to be seen, not heard. Now, with the serial available in its entirety, it looks set to get a major reappraisal. The Web of Fear, which follows on directly from Enemy (indeed, it finishes the final seen, oddly cut short), is one of those stories that has long had a glowing reputation. This can go badly; when The Tomb of the Cybermen was discovered, it rather failed to live up to its reputation. Now, while Web isn't a stone-cold classic, it is a great example of the Troughton era, one of the best of the, admittedly overused, base-under-siege stories (or base-under-siege-by-a-monster-for-six-episodes, to give it the full description).


The Enemy of the World is an atypical story, particularly for the Troughton period. Slap-bang in the middle of the 'Monster Season,' it features no aliens, robots or soap suds, although it is not barren of science fictional elements. It's a near-future thriller – the very near future now – and the commonly applied description of Bondian isn't inappropriate. Set in the year 2017, The Enemy of the World is a political thriller combining espionage with some truly unlikely events and an outlandish villainous plan. While it fails to be as globe-trotting as a James Bond film – this is a sixties BBC budget, after all – it does take in Australia and Eastern Europe to give a feel of a feasible future world that has been divided up into international zones. It's tremendously action-packed, with helicopter escapes, gunfights and plenty of fisticuffs. A narrated soundtrack simply doesn't do it justice.


The most notable element of the serial is, of course, the villain, Salamander, played by Patrick Troughton. The Mexican megalomaniac is a sublime creation, a man of quite incredible ambition and utterly ruthless in his goals. It's Troughton's performance that makes him, of course. While the accent is broad, and the blacking up is a little unfortunate, Troughton excels at portraying four different character combinations. He's the Doctor, Salamander, the Doctor pretending to be Salamander, and, briefly, Salamander pretending to be the Doctor. Troughton creates very clever, subtle differences between the characters, to the point that, while the Doctor's impersonation of Salamander gradually improves, it is still distinct from Salamander himself. While the Doctor plays up his own morality in the face of the politicking, back-stabbing and murder, he doesn't shy away from using his likeness to the would-be dictator for his own advantage. In one seen, he rather callously allows Jamie and Victoria to believe he is Salamander, so that they will confirm their innocence in fear for their own safety. It's a good reminder that the occasionally fluffy second Doctor can be ruthlessly manipulative when he needs to be. “I'm the nicest possible person,” he says. Yeah, right.


While Troughton gets both the lead and the villain role, it's Frazer Hines who gets the Bond part. Jamie Bond, if you will. He sweeps into action to foil a set-up assassination attempt in order to ingratiate himself with Salamander, in one of his most action-packed scenes. There's no doubt about it – Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling make a great team, with or without the Doctor, and they're gorgeous in their matching skirts. While Watling's Victoria does sink to the level of wailing damsel in distress on occasion, this is one of her best stories. Indeed, the largely trying third episode puts her at the centre of an infiltration mission with Jamie, and provides some great comedy moments with the unsung hero of this serial, Reg Lye as Griffin the Chef. Throughout, Jamie and Victoria are portrayed as a couple; not only does Jamie refer to her as his girlfriend as part of his cover story, but the actors play the parts as if they were together. Both this and the following story see Victoria's safety as Jamie's primary concern.


The Enemy of the World boasts a large cast, most of it very fine indeed. Much of the material goes to Bill Kerr as the untrustworthy Giles Kent, who gets some excellent, tense scenes with both of Troughton's characters. Mary Peach is essentially playing a Bond girl as Astrid, but is more than a match for the many male characters she is pitted against, and she holds much of the production together, making some of the most important discoveries to progress the plot. Of particular note is Carmen Munroe as Fariah, Salamander's food taster. Munroe gives a strong, dignified performance in what could have been a shallow role. Instead, writing and acting combine to give a rare example of a strong, black female in a show of this period – I believe Munroe is the first black actress to get a speaking role on the series.


Some of the actors will be familiar to fans of the seventies serials, including Milton Johns, who here plays a particularly nasty little sadist named Benik, and George Pravda, who's just as hard to decipher as Denes as he was as Spandrell (funny that they both came back to play Time Lord Castellans). One of the best characters is Bruce, the security chief played by Colin Douglas. His initially villainous role is subverted as his fair manner and desire for justice win out. It's a decent performance by Douglas, as Bruce pieces things together and comes over to our heroes' side.


As with any supervillain's plan, things get battier as they go along. The complete nuttiness of Salamander's plan becomes apparent as we get to see the cause of the conveniently timed earthquakes that threaten the world. A colony of people living beneath the surface of the Earth, believing Salamander's claims that the world has perished in nuclear war. It's mad, and it's just the sort of absurd twist the serials needs in the second half of the story to give it a kick and keep things interesting. It's a pity that Adam Verney's overly intense performance as underground dweller Colin threatens to derail the whole thing. This stuff needs to be played straight, but good grief, calm it down a bit. Still, once the sheer bizarreness of the coincidence of the Doctor's similarity to Salamander has worn off, things are in danger of becoming a little dull and predictable. After this, anything can happen, and events move forward with increased pace. Finally, of course, comes the final showdown, and the confrontation between the two Troughtons. While technical limitations mean that that the Doctor and Salamander only appear on screen together briefly, it's an astonishingly powerful moment, not least because the now desperate Salamander has breached the safety of the TARDIS itself. The normal rules of Doctor Who break down as the villain escapes from the story's conclusion and almost usurps the Doctor's position. It's a thrilling finale, albeit one that rather stops dead in its tracks once the time's up.

WHO REVIEW: The Ice Warriors DVD

The Ice Warriors is famous for one thing, the thing it was designed for: introducing a popular new monster to Doctor Who. Unlike most attempts to create a successful reoccurring foe for the series in the sixties (I'm looking at you, Quarks) this one actually worked. The Ice Warriors returned the following year, made two appearances opposite Pertwee in the seventies, and then vanished from the screen to become one of those monsers that evryone kept trying to bring back. No one quite managed this until this year, although there were some interesting things done with the Martians in prose and comics during the intervening period. All that said... the Ice Warriors really aren't terribly interesting monsters. Effective, yes, but not interesting.

They look great, of course, in the same way that the Cybermen and the Daleks look great. Big, weird monsters from space, the sort of thing almost guaranteed to get kids to fall in love with the show.  They're essentially a redesign of the Cybermen, in fact; they're clearly cybernetic, with visors in place of eyes, mechanical-looking claws and a sonic gun grafted onto their arms. Like the Cybermen, they stand as generic monsters, there to storm the current serial's base very slowly. They're even thawed out from the ice, as the Cybermen had been a mere two serials earlier. (This is the third story in a row set in a snowy locale. Season Five is as much the tundra season as the monster season.) When it comes down to it, big green men from Mars are not an original concept. Even lizard men had become pretty cliched in sci-fi by this stage. The Ice Warriors' success has nothing to do with the idea behind them; it's purely down to an appealling design. However, it's a design that works well enough to have secured them a somewhat iconic status in the ranks of Doctor Who's many monsters.

What's peculiar is that the hulking tortoises we see are clearly not what was intended in Brian Hayles's script. When Arden and his colleagues discover Varga in the ice, they describe him as a prehistoric man, and clearly "pre-Viking." Even through the polystyrene snow and clear plastic ice we can see that Varga is no man, and that his armour is of a different kind entirely to a Scandinavian pillager's. The script features an ancient humanoid, someone frozen in the ice for longer than is archaeologically feasible, with the astonishing explanation being that he is, in fact, an alien visitor. What we get on screen is a Koopa Trooper on steroids, and while the change makes sense - I doubt space Vikings would have caught the kids' imaginations so well - it clashes with the dialogue. What we see is clearly very different to what the characters are seeing.

Where the serial is really interesting is in its view of the future and of the universe. Nothing dates like science fiction, and the Troughton years were particularly keen on making visits to the 21st century that look absurd to modern eyes. The Ice Warriors goes rather further, to the year 3000 or 5000, depending on how one interprets the dialogue, but is still a fascinating insight into how scientific views in 1967 led to a very different vision of the future than we might have now. That the world is embedded in its "second Ice Age" - geologically inaccurate, but good enough for a general viewer, surely - is brought about by man's own hubris. This period of the series featured a number of climate-changing devices, but in this case it is the overuse of synthetic foods that has led to the strange conditions. By wiping out all the farmland to make room for more homes, the inexorable progress of humanity has led to a vast global cooling. Of course, from a modern perspective this is ridiculous, for as we now know, the destruction of plant life will more likely lead to global warming. Nonetheless, this theory was taken seriously at the time, and the "second Ice Age" that threatens Brittanicus Base and forces people to be evacuated to Africa is a plausible threat by the understanding of the time.

Other scientific anomalies are evident in the story, such as the contention that Mars' atmosphere was predominantly nitrogen-based. Again, this was the consensus at the time, whereas measurements taken over the intervening years have proven that the red planet has a thin atmosphere composed primarily of carbon dioxide. This rather makes a mockery of the Doctor's anti-Martian weapon of ammonnium sulphate. Always the chemist, the second Doctor shows no qualms in using chemical weaponry against the aliens. Then, of course, there is the serial's attitude to computers, which comes across as staggeringly luddite today. In the future of The Ice Warriors, humanity is dictated by great master computers, which calculate all variables before issuing their advice in a staccato monotone. The growing use of computer technology in 1967 was a clear and inevitable inspiration for science fiction writers, almost all of whom completely failed to predict the nature and degree of how computers would be incorporated into our lives. The Ice Warriors is part of a very late-sixties subgenre in which human beings must learn to live their own lives away from the tyranny of computers (see pretty much every second episode of Star Trek in this period). The idea of computers as ubiquitous tools rarely seems to have occurred to anyone. Still, at least the base staff have Facetime.

It's the human element that make the story watchable. Penley and Clent are at the core of the story, both very much stock sci-fi characters - the individualist scientist and the authoritarian overseer - but are written well enough, and crucially performed well enough to go beyond this. Peter Barkworth is fantastic as Clent, his arrogant facade always a step away from cracking open. It's a masterful performance, a brittle character trying to hold it together in an increasingly desperate situation. While his interactions with Penley and the Doctor are fascinating, his defining moment comes when he applauds an underling for voulnteering for the mission, only to be told that he was drafted in. A dozen emotions cross Barkworth's face as his character struggles to maintain his in-control demeanour. It's a gorgeous moment. Penley is almost as good, a characetr that never descends into being the anarchist Clent paints him as. Having Peter Sallis play the part will inevitably cloud it for those of us brought up on Last of the Summer Wine and Wallace and Gromit animations, but Sallis is a good enough actor that this rarely crosses the mind.

Other characters are less well realised. Wendy Gifford does her best as Miss Garrett, but she's very much an ice queen character whose only interesting moments are when she loses her composure. Angus Lennie is great fun as Storr, but the character is the sort of irrational rebel that Clent fears Penley to have become. The guy is nuts, preferring to let a limb go septic instead of talk to those evil scientists. He's strewn from pure cliche. The bear brought in to threaten Penley and Jamie fares better as a character (did he ever act again?) The lead trio are as watchable as always, of course. I'm running out of ways to praise Troughton's performance, and here his chemistry with his co-stars is at its peak. Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling make one of the most gorgeous TARDIS teams ever, and, although they're both playing cardbaord versions of their characters here, they're both on fine form.

The Ice Warriors isn't the most exciting or pacy of serials. Viewers coming to it from the new series in search of the origins of the monster in Cold Blood might be disappointed. The important thing to remember is that this was designed to be watched one episode per week, something that is essential to bear in mind with early Doctor Who. Sit down and watch this and episode or two at a time, and you should be suitable entertained, but it's best not to try to get through it all in one sitting.

The Men Who Would Be Doctor (part one)

The twelfth Doctor has been cast. Of course, there have been more than twelve Doctors. Since BBC Wales brought the series back to our screens, it has introduced no fewer than seven new Doctors - Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith and now Peter Capaldi as proper, regular incarnations, plus John Hurt as a mysterious missing incarnation, Toby Jones as the evil Dream Lord version of the Doctor, and David Morrissey as the pseudo-Doctor, Jackson Lake. And this doesn't cover all the other extra Doctors from the original run of the programme, the movie versions of Doctor Who, the various spin-off versions for Comic Relief, BBCi, stageplays, Big Finish 'Unbound' plays and all manner of other oddities.

Look back into the series' past though, and the list of would-be Doctors is even longer and more baffling. The men who were considered, approached and auditioned. The men who would be Doctor...

Hugh David

The original choice for the Doctor, right back in the very beginning. Hugh David was the choice of Rex Tucker, the caretaker producer for Doctor Who until Verity Lambert took over as full producer. At thirty-eight, David was younger than the original conception of the part, although it's likely that he would have been required to 'age up,' much as Hartnell did when he won the role. In any case, Lambert did not consider David to be right for the role, and the dashing star of Knight Errant is thought to have declined already. David moved into directing, and went on to direct two Doctor Who serials, The Highlanders and Fury from the Deep, both starring Patrick Troughton.

Geoffrey Bayldon

Another younger man considered for the part of the Doctor before Hartnell won it. He would have been thirty-nine at the time, but had experience in playing older characters. His reluctance to accept another 'old man role' is part of the reason he declined the part, as he later told Doctor Who Magazine. Bayldon has played numerous roles over the years, including Organon in the 1979 serial The Creature from the Pit, but is most famous for his starring role in Catweazle during the early seventies. He would finally play the Doctor in two 'Unbound' audios for Big Finish, Auld Mortality and A Storm of Angels. Other actors considered for the role of the first Doctor include Cyril Cusack, Leslie French and Alan Webb.

Boris Karloff

Now, this is an odd one. While most of us now think of Boris Karloff as the star of such monster movies as Frannkestein, The Bride of Frankenstein and The Mummy, his impressive physical stature wasn't his only unusual aspect. Karloff was once as famous for his powerful voice - modern audiences might remember this best from the animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas, in which he was both Grinch and narrator. Karloff was the preferred choice for a Doctor Who radio series designed for sale to America, capitalising on the success of the 1960s Dalek films. In the event, Peter Cushing reprised his role as Doctor Who, and recorded an unsuccessful pilot episode, which is now long lost.

Michael Hordern

Patrick Troughton was always the first choice to take over from William Hartnell - it's rumoured Harntell insisted upon it. However, there was never any guarantee Troughton would agree to taking in the part, and negotiations began with the respected stage and screen star Michael Hordern. In the event, Troughton took on the role, and secured the programme's future.

Valentine Dyall

Another actor considered for the second Doctor was Valetine Dyall, well known for his deep, booming voice (not unlike Boris Karloff then). The imposingly tall actor took more voice roles than screen parts, and was radio's 'Man in Black' for years. He eventually joined the Doctor Who fold in 1979, as the evil Black Guardian, a role to which he returned in 1983. Can you imagine him as the Doctor? He would have been terrifying!




Brian Blessed

Although perhaps not as terrifying as Brian Blessed and his legendarily powerful lungs. Long linked in fan lore as a potential choice for the role of the sixth Doctor, Blessed recently revealed he was offered to take the role of the second. Precisely how formal an offer this was is unclear, particularly considering Blessed's propensity for tall tales. Blessed would have been a mere thirty years old at the time, but still possessed of a prodigiously projectable voice. In 1966, he had just finished a three-year stint on Z-Cars, making him a very recognisable actor in Britain. He would eventually appear in Doctor Who in 1986, as the mighty King Yrcanos in Mindwarp.



Ron Moody

In 1969, following the success of the musical Oliver! Doctor Who producer Barry Letts looked to secure Ron 'Fagin' Moody as the third actor to play the Doctor. It's easy to see Moody playing the Doctor in a similar vein to Troughton, quirky and mercurial. He declined the role, and expressed regret at his decision years later. Jon Pertwee was cast and the show went onto huge success in its colour years.




Graham Crowden

When Pertwee left the role in 1974, a long list of actors was drawn up by Letts and the production team looking for a new Doctor. Early thoughts were to return to an older actor, which led to the addition of Ian Marter as Harry Sullivan, to take on the physical stuff. One actor offered the part was Graham Crowden, who would later join the Doctor Who fold with his, um, unique performance as Soldeed in 1980's The Horns of Nimon, opposite the man who eventually won the Doctor role, Tom Baker.

Fulton Mackay

Having already impressed the producers with his performance in 1970 serial Doctor Who and the Silurians, Scottish actor Fulton Mackay was a preferred choice for Letts's team. Indeed, the role almost went to him, but a comedy pilot that he recently shot went to series, and he was forced to choose between the two regular roles. He chose Porridge.





Jim Dale

With the search for an older actor bearing no fruit, the Letts and co began to look at younger men. Jim Dale, best known for his Carry On... roles, might seem an odd choice now, but he was very seriously considered by the creative team. To see how it might have worked, try watching his disturbing performance as snake oil salesman Doc Terminus in Pete's Dragon. Other actors who auditioned for the part include Michael Bentine and everyone's favourite grandad, Bernard Cribbens.


David Warner

Another name that has been linked with the fourth Doctor shortlist over the years is genre favourite, David Warner. Very recently, he was asked about this in an interview, and has explained that although he was invited to discuss the role, he was never offered the part, and that any talk of him turning it down is hyperbole. In any case, he was already engaged in other work and wouldn't have been able to commit to the role. Warner eventually played the Doctor for Big Finish in 2003, as a version of the third Doctor in Unbound: Sympathy for the Devil, one of many roles for the audio series, and finally appeared onscreen in Doctor Who opposite Matt Smith in the 2013 episode Cold War.


Richard Griffiths

The late Richard Griffiths was considered for the role of the Doctor three times. When Tom Baker resigned, John Nathan-Turner wanted someone entirely different to take on the role; the hefty thespian certainly would have been a contrast to the lanky Tom Baker. In the end, of course, the role went to Peter Davison. Years later, Griffiths was on the mind of casting directors both for the potential 27th season of the show, which would have aired in 1990, and again during the troubled production of the Doctor Who TV movie, which went through various shapes until settling down into the Paul McGann oddity we got in 1996. For Doctor Who fans, watching Withnail and I, with eighth Doctor McGann, potential Doctor Griffiths and spin-off Doctor Richard E. Grant is like some kind of bizarre, parallel universe version of The Three Doctors.

Ken Campbell

Various actors auditioned for the role of the seventh Doctor when Colin Baker was let go. The list includes such names as Tony Robinson, Dermot Crowley and Chris Jury, who was once famous as Lovejoy's sidekick Eric, but isn't really famous anymore. Strangest of all was Ken Campbell, stand-up performer and 'one man dynamo of British theatre.' His audition was considered 'too disturbing' by the production team. In the end, his protege Sylvester McCoy got the part. At least Jury got a role alongside McCoy in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, although it'd be great to see Campbell's audition tapes.

Click here for part two, in which we'll explore the potential Doctors since 1990.

WHO REVIEW: Destiny of the Doctor releases 1-3

Destiny of the Doctor is another of the ‘Doctor-a-month series’ that have been thought up for this anniversary year, and, so far, it seems to be the most successful. It’s a co-production between Big Finish and the BBC AudioGo, with eleven stories released from January to November. The style of the pieces is similar to BF’s Companion Chronicles range, with two performers per play, one as the main storyteller and another as a guest star. Like the Chronicles, the main performer here is a companion actor from the series (at least, so far, whether we get any read by Doctors remains to be seen). However, unlike the Chronicles, these new releases are third-person tellings, rather than being told in the first person by the companion. This gives them a little more leeway in their storytelling, allowing them to spend time alone with other characters and get into their heads in a way the Companion Chronicles are unable to utilise.

It being March, we now have three releases to enjoy, one for each of the first three Doctors – the late, lost heroes. Each release makes a good attempt to bring to life a particular era of the series, although they also make some moves to tying in to a larger plot that threads throughout the series. This element is quite low-key for the moment, but it seems its significance will gradually develop as the series progresses. Plus, there are some cute nods and winks to the ‘future’ of the series in these retrospective releases – Magpie Electricals gets a cheeky nod in the first story, for example.

It’s a peculiar thing, but since Kim Newman’s 2002 novella Time and Relative, the time before An Unearthly Child has gradually become more and more explored. At one point, this period was out of bounds for Doctor Who authors, but over the last few years several releases have been set therein. This year, both the opening instalments of Destiny of the Doctor and the Puffin e-book range take place in this ‘Season Zero’ period, and Big Finish are planning at least one more excursion back there before the year is out.

Doctor by Doctor #2

The Cosmic Hobo
 

Patrick Troughton, 1966-69

Getting two Doctor Who fans to agree on anything is virtually impossible. There is, however, one thing that almost every fan agrees on, a single consensus viewpoint for the bulk of fandom, and it is this: Patrick Troughton was amazing. As we look at in the first of these essays, William Hartnell never played the ‘first Doctor’ during his time on the series; he was simply the Doctor. Peter Cushing had shown in the Dalek movies that someone else could play the character, but he performed a straightforward take-off of Hartnell’s old inventor. As Hartnell’s replacement, Patrick Troughton was faced with an incredibly difficult task. Recasting the lead actor in a successful series is always a gamble. To their credit, the production team on Doctor Who in 1966 made the decision not to cast a Hartnell-like old geezer, and instead chose a well-regarded character actor to create an entirely new take on their central character.  They even refused to make him the centre of his own show at the off, deliberately wrong-footing the audience with an unexplained transformation and a strange, sinister opening performance that offered no comfort for his companions or the viewers.

 It’s certainly arguable that Patrick Troughton is the most talented of the actors who played the Doctor in the original run (only Peter Davison can really contest him that title). It’s difficult to point out just what’s so wonderful about Troughton’s portrayal of the Doctor. His performance had a subtle charm that, apart from the occasional moment of slapstick, was beautifully underplayed. The word often used to describe him is mercurial. He often stands at the edge of scenes, interacting with people and events from the periphery, yet his magnetic performance still allows him to dominate proceedings. So much of his performance lies in little tics and gestures, making the second Doctor notoriously difficult to portray in prose. It’s Troughton’s performance that brings the second Doctor to life as something far beyond the generic Doctor a quick description of him might imply.

The second Doctor was a very different character than the first, but not a wholly new character that some commentators suggest. Much of the second Doctor’s character is a development of the first’s. As the series had gone on, Hartnell’s Doctor had developed from an acerbic, selfish character into a proactive adventurer with a strong sense of humour. Under Troughton, the Doctor continued to develop in this direction. The second Doctor is very much the ultimate expression of this direction in the Doctor’s character. Any pretence at non-interference is now gone; the second Doctor is concerned wholly with vanquishing the evil of the universe.