The Chimes of Midnight

An audio adventure featuring the Eighth Doctor and Charley

Written by Rob Shearman and directed by Barnaby Edwards

Polarity Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Imagine my festive frivolity when, randomly choosing my next Big Finish production to review in mid-December, a story presented itself that was set on Christmas Eve. Not only that, but the blurb on the back of the CD suggested it was some kind of Edwardian murder mystery. Sign me up, I said, and quickly went about listening to it so that I could post my review on this very day, Christmas Eve itself.

A quick word about Christmas stories and Doctor Who. When a story is set on Christmas, it never is about Christmas per se, but rather it involves some kind of an alien invasion set on Christmas Day (one obvious exception is the single episode aired on Christmas Day for "The Daleks' Master Plan," which I have not yet had the pleasure to listen to). There may be robot Santas wielding laser guns and a festive holiday party about to be torn to shreds by a tragedy a la The Poseidon Adventure, but I would love to see or hear a story that involves the concept of Christmas itself as a basis for the plot. (I would refer anyone seeking such a story to the recent Iris Wildthyme adventure, The Claws of Santa, which really hits the nail on the head in this department.) Such is the case with The Chimes of Midnight. There is a great deal of talk about Christmas pudding, one or two carols are sung in passing, but other than that the thing could have been set on Saint Swithen's Day and we would have had the same story.

Not that I have any huge gripes with most of the story. When the TARDIS materializes in the pantry of a country estate in 1906, the Doctor and Charley are involved with the comings and goings of five members of the household staff. Strangely, nothing is heard from the gentry having a Christmas party upstairs, and indeed when the Doctor tries to ascend to the upper levels of the house, he is deterred with unexplainable and uncharacteristic threats of violence from the staff. It's not long before a murder occurs and, in true Ten Little Indians fashion, the staff begin to be bumped off one by one, each at the grandfather clock's striking of the hour: the scullery maid, for instance, is found drowned in the washing basin, and the cook is found sprawled across the kitchen table, force-fed her infamous Christmas pudding to death. These events may seem like spoilers, except that the same characters inexplicably show up minutes later alive and well, oblivious to the fact that they were found murdered moments before. The Doctor and Charley and the listener, of course, are baffled.

This was the perfect setup for a wonderful cosmic mystery. Why are the characters admittedly unsure whether or not they could be the murderer? Why do the household duties of each of the characters change every time they return from the dead? Why do they recognize the Doctor as some kind of famous amateur sleuth? Through the first three episodes, I thought I had it all figured out: of course, I figured, the Doctor and Charley were stuck in some sort of land of fiction as in "The Mind Robber," where an author of whodunnits was constantly rewriting a draft of his latest murder mystery, never quite sure who the proper murderer should be in the end or even the right victim.

My solution, needless to say, was not the correct one. Unfortunately, the true solution to the mystery would have led me to give this story a 4.5 rather than a 3.5 if it didn't leave me scratching my head. I suppose there are fanboys and fangirls out there who love stories involving paradoxes and time folding in on itself, but these type of stories rarely work for me unless they're spelled out for me like I'm a nine-year-old (the old favorite "Blink" comes to mind). In all fairness, I could go back and listen to the last episode, but I just don't think that would be proper. Why go back and listen to a story and purposely look for the good things when the writer and/or director failed to get the point across the first time?

I rarely think this when listening to Big Finish stories, but this one would have been a wonderful televised story for Christmas Day. There were certain passages here that would have translated better on the screen, and the holiday element could have been used a bit more than it was. If Paul Cornell could translate his novel Human Nature so well on to the screen, I say let Rob Shearman have his pick of a few audio adventures, definitely including The Chimes of Midnight, and see what magic he can make of those. He is, after all, the writer who brought us Dalek, for some the epitome of the perfect Dalek episode in the new series.

If you're new to Big Finish (or to the Eighth Doctor adventures), I'm told by folks on the forums that The Chimes of Midnight is one of the best out there. I beg to differ. Pick up a copy of Sword of Orion or Storm Warning instead. Unless, of course, you're one of those fans who love to put the 10% of the missing pieces of a puzzle together yourself. In that case, perhaps you have a better imagination than I and more power to you.

Fun Facts:

• The character names for Shaughnessy, the butler, and Mrs. Baddely, the cook, were derived from the names of the script editor and the actress who played the cook in the classic British show Upstairs, Downstairs.
• These are not the only characters to glean inspiration from Upstairs, Downstairs; Edith, the scullery maid from The Chimes of Midnight, bears a striking resemblance to the feather-brained scullery maid Ruby in Upstairs, Downstairs.

The Romance of Crime

A novel featuring the Fourth Doctor, K9, and Romana II

Written by Gareth Roberts

Polarity Rating: 4 out of 5

Season 17 is arguably the worst period of the Fourth Doctor's era, what with the uninspired "Destiny of the Daleks" (did we really need to see Davros again?), the boring "Creature from the Pit," and Doctor Who's failed attempt at pantomime in "The Horns of Nimon." I imagine Gareth Roberts truly wanted to challenge himself by writing a novel set between those aforementioned stories, or perhaps he's a fan of season 17 and just wanted to celebrate it. In any case, The Romance of Crime somehow feels like a season 17 story, except it turns out to be much better than most of the stories in that very season.

The flavor is in the description of the characters, with guards that wear red frockcoats, a judge who, if he had been portrayed on television, would have chewed the scenery to bits, and villains that seem like hilarious caricatures of some of the more forgettable baddies in Doctor Who's long history. The flavor of this era of the program also can be read in the description of the setting, a space station with meandering corridors in which the characters inevitably run back and forth in. And, perhaps best of all, the portrayal of the Doctor and Romana is crafted straight from the late era of the Fourth Doctor, with the usual banter between the two of them. Take, for instance, this quote from the Doctor as he barges into a control room filled with villains:

"Hello everybody. It's nice to see you again, Xais, and you Mr. Pyerpoint, and you charming Ogron gentlemen, and, ah, you must be the Nisbett brothers. You don't know me, I'm the Doctor, this is my friend Romana, and that's Mr. Stokes, and do you know unless you listen to me I think we're all going die."

It's as if Gareth Roberts was actually channeling Tom Baker. Try having any one of the other ten actors that have played the Doctor say that line, and it wouldn't feel right at all, not even if David Tennant gave it his best.

Most of the story unfolds aboard the Rock of Judgment, a space station which cruises the galaxy and functions as both a kind of galactic courthouse and prison. The captain, for lack of a better word, is a judge named Pyerpoint, who spends the first half of the story trying to keep order in true bureaucratic fashion after the Doctor and Romana arrive. The Rock is home to a number of interesting characters, including security chief Margo, who seems to suffer from erratic bouts of possession from forces unknown, and Menlove Ereward Stokes, the resident artist and winner of this story's most eccentric name. (Stokes spends much of the story cowering behind corners, whining about every situation he finds himself in, and trying unsuccessfully to hit on Romana. He reminds me very much of a heterosexual version of Dr. Smith from Lost in Space.)

We soon learn that Margo is slowly being taken over by the spirit Xais, an evil female mutant who had been executed at the Rock years earlier for slaughtering dozens of non-mutants, whom she calls Normals. Xais can kill human just by looking at them, but they don't just drop dead; they literally fold in on themselves in a grisly display of flesh and bones. Xais has her own allies, the Nesbitt brothers, intergalactic gangsters who look like Drew Carey and act like Gordon Ramsey. Oh, and the Ogrons make an appearance as well, and Roberts handles them much better than they way they were portrayed in "Day of the Daleks" and "Frontier in Space." (No spoliers there -- there's a drawing of an Ogron on the front cover.)

What Xais has planned I will not tell you. What I can tell you, however, is that it involves a number of allies and a tangled web of deviousness that I relished reading. What results is a typical "base under siege" story, with characters being split up, reunited again, and split up again into different combinations. Of particular note is K9's role in the story as he accompanies a rough undercover police agent who ends up taking a shine to the tin dog.

Xais' evil plot aside, the main attraction is reading about these characters rather than the way the story moves. Perhaps the plot itself is the story's weakest link, as it's all pretty straightforward, but it's the tasty ingredients in the story itself -- namely, the characters -- that make this stew particularly good.

This was Gareth Roberts' fourth novel for Virgin's Missing Adventures series (the first three were Seventh Doctor New Adventures) and he went on to pen a handful more and wrote three scripts for the new series, namely "The Shakespeare Code," "The Unicorn and the Wasp," and "Planet of the Dead." All three of these scripts lack much of the humor and rib-poking that fills The Romance of Crime (with some exceptions, particularly in "The Unicorn and the Wasp"), and I'm hoping that his upcoming installment for the Eleventh Doctor brings some of this back. He was certainly an asset to the novels published by Virgin, and I look forward to reading more by him.

Fun Facts:

• Roberts brought the large, eccentric, and bald artist, Menlove Stokes, back in The Well-Mannered War and he later became a regular in the Benny New Adventures.
• For this first time (I think) we're told that the Ogrons are from the planet Braah, where drastic changes in the climate caused the Ogrons to undergo an evolutionary hiccup. As a result, they're not unlike a cross between an ape and a koala bear.

Revenge of the Cybermen

A televised adventure featuring the Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry

Written by Gerry Davis and directed by Michael E. Briant

Polarity Rating: 2 out of 5

Long before Star Trek: The Next Generation presented us with the Borg, two wily chaps named Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis sat down to create the race of alien villains for the First Doctor's final story, "The Tenth Planet." There's no record or citation for this, but I am willing to bet that they wanted something fairly less banal than Terry Nation's Daleks, which had taken the country by storm three years previously. Pedler and Davis' Cybermen could walk up and down stairs, perform tasks that required appendages, and withstand extreme climate changes without needing a special floor to provide static electricity. As the canon progressed, we learned that Cybermen are also allergic to gold dust and, perhaps creepiest of all, use unwilling human subjects to create more Cybermen. (This last feature was exploited in "The Tomb of the Cybermen" and rather disturbingly in Steve Lyons' novel Killing Ground, and totally eliminates the need for any Cyberwomen. Hear that, Torchwood?)

Prior to "Revenge of the Cybermen," the villains had made a handful of appearances during the Second Doctor's era but never lifted a silver-gloved finger to pester the Third Doctor. Season 12 presented the audience with a four-story arc involving the transmat system to and from Space Station Nerva: "The Ark in Space," "The Sontaran Experiment," "Genesis of the Daleks," and finally "Revenge of the Cybermen." Upon viewing, it's no surprise that "Revenge" rounded out the end of the season, when the production crew will look for ways to cut the budget wherever possible. The sets are borrowed from "The Ark in Space" (although not to the story's detriment), most of the costumes look like they were slapped together with tin foil, the special effects are laughable, and the alien effects are unconvincing. Suffice it to say that the actors all tend to pull it together at the end of the day, although I cannot say the same for those that penned the story.

Ah yes...the story. Although I will go on about that in a moment, I should add not all the blame must be laid on Gerry Davis; he thrilled us so well with "The Tomb of the Cybermen." I was shocked to learn that none other than Robert Holmes was responsible for many of the blemishes in the story; after reading Davis' story, as script editor Holmes made a number of changes, including adding the unbearable Vogans.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. This is after all, a Cybermen story, so surely the creators gave the much-missed aliens something clever and cool to do after their long hiatus following "The Invasion." (A word of warning: As this story has yet to see the light of day on DVD, I'm a little hesitant to reveal a lot, but I simply cannot bring myself to criticize this episode without revealing a lot of details, so spoilers abound.) This time around, after recovering from their war with the Vogans, whose world is made up entirely of gold, a small crew of Cybermen are making their way towards the Nerva Beacon, which thousands of years later would become Space Station Nerva in "The Ark in Space." The Cybermen have spearheaded their visit with the help of a human ally, Professor Kellman, who has planted a number of adorable Cybermats on board the beacon; the Cybermats have bitten and killed 46 people aboard the beacon since their introduction (plus one more just after the Doctor and his friends arrive), and the crew has mistaken this for some sort of space plague.

So far so good. Once the Cybermen arrive, they plan to capture the three remaining humans left alive on the beacon (excluding Kellman), strap bombs to their bodies that look not unlike bowling balls, and then force them to transmat onto Voga where the bombs will "fragmentize" (the Cyber Leader's word, not mine) and destroy the gold-enriched planet. One assumes, therefore, that the Cybermen feel they'll be safe as houses because Voga is the primary source of gold in the galaxy, which is a contentious point but not particularly bothersome to me.

The Vogans, on the other hand, have their own plans. Kellman, it turns out, is really a double-agent working with the Guardians (a rebellious warrior faction of the Vogans), who have spent two years building a rocket ship (which, by the way, bears a strange resemblance to a NASA spacecraft, as well as the rocket in "Genesis of the Daleks") which will be aimed to strike Nerva Beacon at the precise moment all the Cybermen are aboard, thus ensuring the safety of Voga and proving the love of the Vogans for their children at long last.

So herein lies the problem that I couldn't get the fuck out of my mind while watching this story. The Cybermen have a space ship and bombs. The Vogans live on a big meteor made out of gold, and it appears that their only advances have been interior decorating, spelunking, and tram-building. Yet the Cybermen lack the technology to build a big goddam missile that will blow Voga to shit, and the Vogans have pulled this giant rocket out of their green asses, albeit they did it in two years. Hello, Robert Holmes, anyone home?

On top of it all, not unexpectedly the Doctor foils the Cybermen's plans, at which point they begin to execute their "alternative" plan: crash the Nerva Beacon into Voga, but not before escaping in their own ship. Why didn't they just show up, kill the remaining four humans, then nose-dive the beacon into Voga in the first place? Someone really needs to sit down with the Cybermen in the local IHOP and explain to them that complicated plans are not necessarily the best. This plot, compared to their Rube Goldberg plan in "The Moonbase," simply makes the mind boggle, although it apparently bears some credence to a Cybermind.

As for the design of the Cybermen themselves, I have no idea why the production team thinks it should be changed every time they make an appearance. This new design is not a vast improvement of that in "The Invasion," nor is it really any worse than the later appearance the Cybermen would make in "Earthshock." And the sound effects people simply lost the memo on how to make the Cybermen talk, since what we have here are some actors talking loudly inside their helmets; gone is the creepy computerized voice we hear in every other Cybermen story.

The design of the Vogans is a dismal failure. They look like William Hartnell mated with a Klingon, and the actors themselves fail to make the aliens plausible. The effects crew has done better in previous seasons with races such as the Draconians, and I saw no need to make the Vogans anything more than humanoid.

But it's not all bad. The chemistry between the Doctor and his companions is as fun as ever, particularly between him and Harry ("Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!"). It's a shame Harry left the TARDIS crew in the story after this one, as watching the banter between him and the Doctor would have been a joy to behold. Jeremy Wilkin as the sneering Professor Kellman also makes a good turn, and I was sorry to see him bludgeoned to death three-fourths into the story (killed by a rock fall accidentally caused by Harry, no less).

Another fun bit in this story, as is often the case, is Tom Baker's performance. After the Cyber Leader forces the Doctor to strap on a bomb and explains his plan to destroy Voga, Tom Baker lets loose with a monologue reflecting his utter disrespect for the Cybermen, most memorably calling them something like "silver-plated structures used by people to hang their hats on." Fun, fun stuff.

Where "City of Death" was a diamond placed in a season among a shitpile of abominations, "Revenge of the Cybermen" is just the opposite: a turd sitting in the fragrant garden in which the rest of season 12 seems to bloom forever.

Fun Facts: Look closely at what the Vogans are using for decoration in their gallery/control room. Doesn't that piece of art bear a striking resemblance to the seal of Gallifrey? Also, this story marks a point in Doctor Who history as the first one available on VHS (you can now purchase it on ebay for anywhere between $11.99 and $20.00). As of this writing, it has not been released on DVD, and I wouldn't hold my breath. Apparently, I am not alone in my lack of enthusiasm for this story; in October of 2009 the readers of Doctor Who Magazine ranked "Revenge of the Cybermen" 13o out of the 200 current stories.

Three's a Crowd

An audio adventure featuring the Fifth Doctor, Peri, and Erimem

Written by Colin Brake and directed by Gary Russell

Polarity Rating: 3.5 out of 5

After listening to this story, I really have to admit that there was nothing particularly extraordinary or original about it. There's a stranded colony of earthlings, a lot of people getting separated and running up and down corridors, and elements of the story seem to have lifted directly from films like Alien and The Island. All that being said, I still have to admit that it has everything that a halfway decent Doctor Who story has, and I have to laud it on that fact alone, as so many of the Big Finish stories seem to try to do something new and innovative and fall flat on their face (Minuet from Hell comes to mind).

The setting is space station Earth Colony Phoenix, stranded in space and cut off from the home planet, still attempting to terraform the unnamed planet below. The station itself is apparently huge, but houses a minimal number of colonists, and all of them are forced to live in solitary living quarters, never mingling with more than one other colonist at a time. The colony seems more like a prison ship, with the colonists suffering from severe agoraphobia (thus the title). Earth Colony Phoenix is headed by a woman named Auntie (perhaps hearkening back to Mother from Alien?), and she is played with steely coolness by Deborah Watling, whom most of us will know as Victoria during the Second Doctor's era. Ms. Watling has changed quite a bit over the years, and when I saw her hosting one the documentaries on missing episodes as part of the Lost in Time boxed set, I was taken aback at how stoic and somehow cruel she seemed, not unlike a poor man's Anne Robinson.

But I digress. The Doctor and his companions arrive as usual (with Erimem still feeling a bit of angst left over from their last adventure), and we learn that, unbeknownst to most of the colonists, Space Station Phoenix has been infested by a lizard-like alien race called the Khelllian (three L's, that's not a misspelling). The infestation becomes apparent when the TARDIS crew comes across a room filled with large slimy eggs; look closely at the CD cover art and you can see them. Again, inspiration from Alien looms.

I will not tell you what the Khelllian are up to and why they are being aided by Auntie, but the cliffhanger at the conclusion of the second episode is spine tingling; I really didn't see that one coming! There are three other colonists we meet: Bellip, Laroq, and Vidler, and they're pretty much indistinguishable except for the fact that Bellip is a high-strung female and Vidler seems to be a little more headstrong. The three characters were likely added to the mix to provide company to Peri and Erimem, who almost instantly break away from the Doctor and are involved in their own subplots. (There's also an insipid little romance between Bellip and Laroq, but this subplot seems a little forced and pads the story to its detriment, although it is helpful to understand the isolated lives the colonists are living.)

I have listened to about 25 Big Finish stories so far, and while Three's a Crowd doesn't stand out as one of the best, I really cannot say many bad things about it. Again, the lack of originality didn't seem to bother me, since this formula has worked so well in episodes like "The Ark in Space" and "The Macra Terror." I can say that the second half of the last episode was rushed and confusing, with all of the characters struggling to arrive at a fixed point while a time bomb counted down the seconds. How some of them survive eludes me (the story relies a little heavily on the convenience of transmat technology), and there's a final scene involving a hidden explosion that seems a little tacked on, but the resulting squishy sounds effects that were fun.

Deborah Watling is chillingly wonderful as Auntie, Peter Davison gives an adequate performance as the Doctor, and Nicola Bryant outshines her television performances as Peri. Caroline Morris as Erimem is a true joy, however, and I look forward to listening to more adventures with her. I've only listened to one Erimem adventure (The Eye of the Scorpion, her first one) and look forward to hearing more. She seems to be a carbon copy of Leela from the classic series, but it's fun to listen to her interact with Peri rather than just stick in her in the TARDIS to let the Doctor do his Professor Higgins magic again. Also, to my knowledge this is the only story in which the Doctor presents one of his companions with the option of staying behind to help the survivors and she turns him down, preferring a life in the TARDIS.

Kudos also goes to Gary Russell, who did a fine job recreating an eerie, desolate space station. Russell has come under fire from some fans for his lacklustre writing and his insistence on bringing back old villains, but I've enjoyed almost everything he's done for Doctor Who.

Three's a Crowd would be a great recommendation for Big Finish fans, and I am tempted to recommend it to fans who don't listen to the audio adventures because it hearkens back to the classic series so well. Just don't eat anything while you're listening to it.

The Eleventh Tiger

A novel featuring the First Doctor, Barbara, Ian, and Vicki

Written by David A. McIntee

Polarity Rating: 3 out of 5

I've never been a very big fan of the historical epics during the First Doctor's era, so it was with trepidation that I opened The Eleventh Tiger. However, my fears were quickly allayed: the prose is descriptive and the characters (particularly the four regulars) are well-realized. McIntee uses masterful brush strokes to recreate China in 1865, and I was almost instantly sucked in.

But first, a bit of history. In 1865 China was still recovering from the Opium Wars, in which they lost to the British and were forced to tolerate the British occupation as they traded freely in opium and other goods. Among other things, China also ceded Hong Kong to the British. In the background of all this was a league of bandits known as the Black Flag Army, whose primary ambition at the time was to oppose the British. It's the Black Flag Army that's the catalyst of this story, although we later learn that, as usual, there are otherworldly powers pulling the strings.

As colorful as the book was, it dragged out for a bit in the beginning after the main characters are introduced and we discover that there's a British soldier in the city of Guangzhou who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ian. Did Ian return in the future? And why does this soldier not remember anything about his own life? The mystery is pretty compelling, since we all know he and Barbara eventually returned to their own time. But more on that a bit later. The story appeared to be taking the turn that most of the historicals did, with the TARDIS crew involving themselves in some tumultuous past event. Until, that is, we meet the abbot who is gearing up to take over the Black Flag Army. And the guy literally plucks out the eyeball of a dead deer and pops it into his mouth like a grape, but not before he orders one of his henchmen to cut off the nose and tongue of an allegedly insolent minion. And with this passage, the story takes a turn for the better.

Well, not all that better. McIntee's writing style continues to shine, and there are some absolutely fabulous passages with descriptions of hand to hand combat; this guy would have been an awesome choice to write a novelization of Kill Bill. There are some creepy terracotta soldiers that are possessed by alien energy and run amok, and the celestial activity leading up to the villain's master plan cause energy stored in rock to create images of ghosts. (Female ghosts, it should be noted, with long black hair that weep for dead lovers. I see some influence from the film Ringu in there somewhere.)

And then, dear reader, after a climactic scene in which Ian is going to shoot his future self to save Barbara's life, the story just takes a complete nosedive. We learn the story behind Ian's body double, and it's one of the most contrived plot points in recent memory. After leading us down the garden path for pages and pages, making the reader wrack his brains to figure out why a future Ian is in China in 1865 and why he's suffering from amnesia, we learn (spoiler alert!) that the "future" Ian is actually the "real" Ian's great grandfather. And they look like twin brothers! This has absolutely nothing to do with the alien menace lurking throughout the rest of the story and served only to insult the intelligence of the reader.

I have no complaints about McIntee's portrayal of the First Doctor, which is spot-on; there's a wonderful scene in which he engages in hand to hand combat that I could easily play out in my head despite the Doctor's obvious frailty. This is also the first novel, to my knowledge, in which we get to read about the inevitable affection between Ian and Barbara, and they even snog at one point. It was a bit of a shock, but ultimately quite understandable (particularly since they eventually marry, as we learn in The Devil Goblins of Neptune). Vicki seems a little under-utilized, as she spends most of the story hanging about in the background and developing a crush of her own on a local boy.

At the end of the day, the alien menace is vanquished and our heroes leave in the TARDIS. Unfortunately, the ending just seems a tad bit forced, as the solution to the problem appears out of nowhere. I do forgive McIntee for that, as the rest of the novel (sans the bit with Ian's double) is quite good.

Great writing or not, The Eleventh Tiger is not McIntee's best; he thrilled the socks off of me years ago with The Dark Path and impressed me again with The Face of the Enemy. But, particularly if you're a fan of the historical stories, you can't really go that wrong with this book. It beats the hell out of Sick Building anyway.

The Enemy of the World

A televised adventure featuring the Second Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria

Written by David Whitaker and directed by Barry Letts

Polarity Rating: 4 out of 5

To the chagrin and frustration of Doctor Who fans everywhere, there lies a number of gaping holes in the canon, the most obvious being many of the episodes in the fourth and fifth series. At some point in the sixties or seventies, someone at the BBC (probably with a long-seated grudge against Patrick Troughton in particular) went on some kind of bender and elected to destroy a large handful of episodes from the First and Second Doctors' eras. Up until a few years ago, a few single episodes tended to pop up now and then, the most astonishing being the discovery of all four episodes of "Tomb of the Cyberman." "The Enemy of the World" contains six episodes, yet only one was recovered, and the story remains available solely on CD from the BBC (apart, of course, from telesnaps rendered by fans with an elementary understanding of editing with their VCR as well as a great deal of time to waste). Ironically, this very fact probably serves as something of a saving grace to the story.

"The Enemy of the World" uses one of those plot devices that always turns up in any adventure series: the evil-doer who just happens to be a dead ringer for the hero. Doctor Who used it previously in "The Reign of Terror," and it was used to a lesser extent in "The Chase" (ugh!) and "The Android Invasion." I've always thought this was silly and horribly contrived, but Patrick Troughton's performance here as the evil Mexican politician Salamander is top-notch and a joy to behold. The plot seems inspired by the James Bond movies that were rising in popularity in the sixties, with the Doctor and his companions landing sometime in humankind's future, where an ostensibly beneficial diplomat named Salamader is pulling the strings behind the scenes to secure his own rise to dictatorship. He delights in poisoning those who refuse to do his bidding, blames innocent lackies for circumstances beyond their control so he can replace them with evil stooges, and pretty much spends the first four episodes delighting in doing everything evil but twirling his moustache and tying Victoria to the tracks in the face of an oncoming train.

For much of the story, the Doctor plays second fiddle after Jamie and Victoria, who dive head-first as undercover employees in Salamander's operation; Jamie finds himself employed as a bodyguard while Victoria becomes an assistant to Chef Griffin (kudos to Reg Lye for a hilarious and memorable performance as Griffin). Just when all the cloak and dagger and double-dealings start getting tiresome (particulary when you know you have two more episodes to sit through), writer David Whitaker deals a surprise double-punch in the fifth and sixth episodes that made me almost clap my hands in delight like a giddy schoolgirl.

"The Enemy of the World" is the first "missing" televised story I've listened to in its entirety, so it was a treat to listen to a Second Doctor adventure after I thought I'd cashed my viewing list by seeing every available episode (I only learned recently that all the missing stories are available on CD). Six episodes can sometimes be quite a drudgery (hello, "The Time Monster"), but this story never loses its pacing.

As mentioned earlier, Patrick Troughton obviously has a blast playing the villain, and his usual portrayal of the Doctor seems to be overshadowed by Salamander, but one tends not to mind with the subplots involving Jamie and Victoria. In fact, the Doctor makes seems uncharacteristically hesitant to involve himself in the action in the first couple episodes, but this was probably so Troughton could showcase himself as Salamander first. Carmen Munroe as Fariah also gets an honorable mention and, as another reviewer mentioned, seeing a strong black woman in a position of power was something of a groundbreaker in 1967.

But there is a problem, and I feel almost guilty mentioning it. We can all hate the folks at the BBC for scrapping all those reels of film, but after listening to this story on audio and then reviewing the surviving third episode (available on the "Lost in Time" DVD boxed set), I was unbelievably disappointed by the shoddy production design, which looks like it was slapdashed together by the stage crew of a high school drama department. For instance, there's a slightly sad and disturbing scene in which one of Salamander's stormtroopers rampages a confused and scared citizen's home. The scene would have had more impact had the poor fellow had more in his home than, say, a cupboard of fragile dishes hanging right by the front door. And, of course, a lone portrait of Salamander on an otherwise blank wall which just begs the characters to comment on it.

I realize it's a bit uncharacteristic for fans to pick apart the production values of Doctor Who, but this story is a remarkable example of how the substance of the plot really rises over the wobbly sets, making it a testament to the quality of the show in its early years.

The CD release of "The Enemy of the World" is part of the BBC Radio Collection, and was presented with linking narration by Frazer Hines, who played Jamie. It doesn't sound like time has been kind to Mr. Hines, although that may just be the change in his accent, but he does a superb job, making both unobtrusive remarks about simple blocking points and passionate details about fistfights and action sequences.

Fun Facts: Patrick Troughton's son, David, played one of the guards in fifth and sixth episodes. Frazier Hines' cousin, Ian, also played a Central European guard in the second and third episodes. I was also a little surprised to learn that the readers of Doctor Who Magazine ranked this story 139 out of 200 in the October, 2009 poll. Would it have ranked higher if we were able to see all six episodes?

The Key 2 Time: The Destroyer of Delights

An audio adventure featuring the Fifth Doctor and Amy

Written by Jonathan Clements and directed by Lisa Bowerman

Polarity Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Big Finish's three-part "Key 2 Time" series is, in a way, a sequel to the six stories of the Fourth Doctor's era involving the Doctor's quest to recover the six missing segments of the Key to Time, reassemble them, and defeat the evil Black Guardian. On the 30th anniversary of the series, Big Finish has added three new stories involving the same premise, including a new companion, but this time with the Fifth Doctor.

The second installment, The Destroyer of Delights, is a standalone adventure in that you don't need to listen to the first installment, The Judgment of Isskar, to understand what is going on (I jumped full into it purposely knowing nothing about the first story). The Fifth Doctor has been joined by Amy, a new companion who has apparently been incarnated by forces unknown into a humanoid entity to help the Doctor in his quest. One of Amy's talents is that she can sense the presence of a segment by instinct alone, much like the contraption used by the Doctor and Romana in the classic series (you know, that plastic wand that sounded suspiciously like a radiation detector). Also, Amy adds an extra element to the narrative as a "newborn" entity: she doesn't understand emotional concepts like pain, enjoyment, or sadness. I have to admit that this does not add much to narrative structure or enjoyment of The Destroyer of Delights, and she simply reminded me of Lieutenant Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Granted, of course, I have not yet heard her contributions to the first and third installment of the series.

Since The Destroyer of Delights was my first foray into this trilogy, I had a minor quibble right from the start: apparently the Doctor has already assembled the first four of the six segments in the very first story! To my knowledge, The Judgment of Isskar is a full four-part story (as opposed to four shorter stories), but I cannot understand why the producers chose to split the Key to Time into six segments for three stories when they could have split it into three segments (or, alternately, split it into six segments with six two-part stories). Then again, maybe I am jumping the gun here.

But back to the meat and potatoes. The story opens with the Doctor and Amy looking death in the face as the TARDIS is about to engulfed by the sun, when an unknown power freezes the TARDIS in space and time, saving their lives. Their knight in shining armor turns out to be the Black Guardian, whose powers have atrophied since the Key was broken up. He is willing to aid the Doctor in his quest, as the loss of the Key to Time would, in essence, mean the end of his existence and his possible domination of space and time.

I really enjoyed the surprise addition and handling of the Black Guardian in this story. When we last saw him in "Enlightenment," he was as evil and hellbent as the Daleks, but here we come to understand him not as the embodiement of all that is evil, but all that is rebellous and chaotic as well. The White Guardian, he explains, is the embodiement of all that is structured and lawful, like dinner with your mother-in-law or the legalization of marijuana (that second example is my own). The Black Guardian is played excellently by David Troughton, son of Patrick Troughton, and we saw David as early on as "The Curse of Peladon" and as recently as "Midnight." And yes, he sounds almost exactly like his father.

What with the Key to Time broken and dwindling in power, the Black Guardian is unable to locate the fifth segment: his intuitive powers seem to point him to three different locations in time and space (including 9th century Sudan), but he simply cannot pinpoint where or when it could be. Amy is in a similar quandary. This is the point when, through means and reasons I cannot understand after multiple listenings, the Doctor and Amy literally drop out of the sky in 9th Century Sudan.

Amy finds herself in the estate of Lord Cassim, who has been evading the taxman for the last two years by hoarding gold and giving it instead to an ominous-sounding alien who is hiding out in his crash-landed ship. It took me a while to realize that Cassim is actually the Black Guardian in human form; on a second listening, it occurred to me I was supposed to realize this immediately once Cassim was introduced, but Jonathan Clements tries to convey this by a single subtle line. I had initially gone almost three-quarters through the story before realizing the characters were one and the same. Again, maybe it's my own ignorance and short attention span that failed me here, but it really affected my enjoyment of the story the first time through.

The Doctor winds up in the desert, where he is helped by nomads and eventually takes refuge with the Legate of the Caliph, a tax collector who is none other than the White Guardian himself, also trapped in human form on Earth because his powers, like his counterpart's, have atrophied. Of course, the White Guardian is desperate for the Doctor to find all the segments of the Key to Time, as he is stuck in human form until it can be reassembled.



The Destroyer of Delights suffers from the problem that is evident in so many Big Finish productions: the first two or three episodes are all dragged out with exposition, introducing new characters with uninteresting subplots, while the fourth episode often tends to be a little anti-climactic by the time it's all wrapped up. The real villian in the story is the ominous Djinni, an alien stranded on Earth after his ship made a crash-landing. The Djinni is using the Black Guardian to collect gold to power the ship, but doesn't do much of anything throughout the entire story other than shout and provide an alien spacecraft for all the action in the end.

Unfortunately, I do not have a lot of positive things to say about this story other than the performances by David Troughton and Jason Watkins as the two Guardians are a joy to behold; the bits between them steal the show. Even Peter Davison seems to be just going through the moves, although since I'm not particularly a fan of the Fifth Doctor I'm a little biased. There's a cliched romance between a servant girl and a prince, and Amy spends much of the time acting bewildered and, in classic Doctor Who companion fashion, requires much of what is going on to be explained to her.

If one is looking for an excellenet science fiction adventure, my recommendation is to look elsewhere. One interesting point, though: the character of Lord Cassim, whom the Black Guardian is masquerading as, was an actual ruler in Sudan. He was made infamous in the history books for his mysterious hoarding of gold. I like the fact that Jonathan Clements nipped a tidbit of history to put in his story, but I wish he could have tried harder when delivering the goods.

Sick Building

A novel featuring the Tenth Doctor and Martha

Written by Paul Magrs

Polarity Rating: 1.5 out of 5

After the televised series ended in 1989, Doctor Who fans became hungry for more, and the BBC sated their appetites with the release of a series of novels featuring both "new adventures" featuring the Eighth Doctor and "missing adventures" featuring the other seven. Many of the books were well-written, mature, and blasted some of the televised stories out of the water for their sheer imagination, characterization, and plotting.

After the BBC revived the television show in 2005, they began churning out books again, this time featuring the Doctor's ninth and tenth incarnations. BBC Books plans on issuing its 40th release of this series in September, 2009. The books themselves are sleek, eye-catching, and hardbacked. Sick Building is only the second I have read in the series and, although it will not be my last, it seems that BBC Books has sacrificed plot, characterization, and theme for some books that will look impressive on a collector's shelf.

The story's MacGuffin is the Voracious Craw, an unbelievably gigantic creature, not unlike those huge sand worms in Dune, that consumes all life on a planet by simply sucking up hordes of plant and animal life into its maw with some sort of tremendous sucking tornado. The Doctor is concerned that the Craw is decimating Tiermann's World, a small wilderness planet literally owned by the eccentric but brilliant Professor Tiermann and inhabited exclusively by the Professor, his wife, and their teenage son. The Doctor pays the Tiermanns a visit in their luxurious Dreamhome, which is swarming with the Professor's robotic inventions that serve the humans in every capacity imaginable: there is a quirky robot whose sole purpose is to serve cocktails, and there's another who exists simply to dispense medication to Tiermann's wife. The family is all too aware that in a day and half's time the Craw will destroy their Dreamhome, but it becomes increasingly apparent that Professor Tiermann is far too proud to leave behind his home and what amounts to his life's work. As the tension between the Doctor and Tiermann rises, the impending visitation of the Craw causes the Dreamhome and its robotic inhabitants to malfunction. Soon it's obvious that the Dreamhome itself, possessed by a computer consciousness gone mad, will stop at nothing to prevent the humans from leaving.

The premise here is actually quite thrilling; the Doctor and his allies find themselves assailed by such threats as fanged flying vacuums and a hungry horned bear-creature that finds its way into the mansion after the protective shields go down. All these elements are obstacles which get in the way of the party escaping the Dreamhome, while all this time the hours are counting down to the inevitable visit of the Voracious Craw and the destruction of everything within miles. This should have been a thrilling adventure, where the reader can never guess which characters will make it out alive. Unfortunately, the author injects several elements into the story that force it to fall flat on its face.

The idea of a mansion filled with artificial intelligence is intriguing, but how can one possibly visualize a tanning bed with legs and which can speak and form friendships? Or a presumably "female" vending machine named Barbara who develops a crush on the Doctor? Mind you, these are not simply incidental quirks in the story, but major characters that participate in much of the action. Fiction is supposed to ignite one's imagination, but I simply could not grasp the physical concept of a four-legged tanning bed running for it's life down a staircase with its human counterparts. All of this is not helped at all by the Doctor: you see, we know that robots, no matter how complex, do not have feelings. But the Doctor, with all of his wisdom, seems to sympathize with these creatures, and goes far out of his way to ensure their survival. This seemed to work rather well in the televised adventure "Robot," in which the titular creature was conflicted between its feelings of friendship with Sarah Jane and its programming to destroy, but the robots in Sick Building were created merely to serve in menial capacities, and it just spirals into downright silliness.

Aside from the Doctor and Martha, the remaining three characters have little redeeming value; Professor Tiermann is obviously insane and unsympathetic, his wife Amanda serves no other purpose than to cry and become a burden to the escapees, and his son Solin is a two-dimensional teenager who develops an annoying crush on Martha. How are we supposed to care about these people?

And then there's the conclusion, in which the Doctor tries stop the Voracious Craw with a plan involving soda pop. It's tempting to simply describe this right here to show how ridiculous it is, but for the sake of spoiling it for anyone wanting to read this book, I will stop here.

There are, I admit, some good points. There's a clever little plot twist involving a secret harbored by one of the characters, and an amusing scene where the Doctor distracts a carnivorous scavenger by singing Queen's "Bohemian Rapsody." Unfortunately, these highlights are not enough to save an insipid and contrived storyline.

If the other entries in this series of novels are anything like this, it's clear that BBC Books is targeting younger, pre-teen fans of the show. The whole thing seems to have the same prose as a Choose Your Own Adventure storybook, albeit without the reader making any choices. I'm all for appealing to young readers, but what happened to the descriptive and darker stories we saw with the BBC Books' missing adventures and those with the Eighth Doctor?

I will definitely shelve Sick Building among my collection, but I doubt I will ever read it again. I cannot say the same for the televised series, which wisely steers away from lovesick vending machines. Yes, there are some things that simply cannot be realized seriously on screen, and I am more than willing to turn off some of my logical thinking while reading a story, but Sick Building seems to take that for granted for much more than its worth.