Day: September 2, 1967

Categories
Classic Season 05 Doctor Who

Tomb Of The Cybermen

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS brings the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria to the wasteland of the planet Telos, where they spot a human expedition on a journey to unearth the lost tombs of the Cybermen, a threat thought to be long extinct. Despite the Doctor’s vocal misgivings, Professor Parry and his fellow explorers insist on breaching the enormous doors and venturing into the apparently vacant tombs. But when automatic defense systems begin to pick off Parry’s team one by one, the expedition begins to look like a doomed one. When someone in the expedition reveals their true purpose – to reactivate and take control of the Cybermen – the entire galaxy begins to look doomed unless the Doctor can confine the Cybermen once more.

Order this story on DVDDownload this episodewritten by Kit Pedler & Gerry Davis
directed by Morris Barry
music not credited

Guest Cast: Roy Stewart (Toberman), Aubrey Richards (Professor Parry), Cyril Shaps (Viner), Clive Merrison (Callum), Shirley Cookin (Kaftan), George Rubicek (Hopper), George Pastell (Kleig), Alan Johns (Rogers), Bernard Holley (Haydon), Ray Grover (Crewman), Michael Kilgarriff (Cyber Controller), Hans De Vries (Cyberman), Tony Harwood (Cyberman), John Hogan (Cyberman), Richard Kerley (Cyberman), Ronald Lee (Cyberman), Charles Pemberton (Cyberman), Kenneth Seegr (Cyberman), Reg Whitehead (Cyberman), Peter Hawkins (Cybermen voices)

Broadcast from September 2 through 23, 1967

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 16 Doctor Who

The Ribos Operation

.Doctor WhoThe Doctor’s TARDIS is diverted to an unknown place. Upon landing, the Doctor meets the White Guardian, a being more powerful than even the Time Lords, who has chosen the Doctor to retrieve the six missing segments of the Key To Time, which will supposedly restore time and space to a more balanced state. With a new version of K9 up and running, the Doctor is keen to undertake this adventure alone, but again, the Guardian chooses a new companion for the Doctor, a Time Lady named Romanadvortrelundar.

The search for the first of the Key To Time’s six segments leads the Doctor, K9 and Romana to an unlikely place for such an item: the backwards planet Ribos. The natives are wrapped up in superstition and tradition, and they’re largely unaware that their planet is being targeted for takeover by the mad exiled warlord Graff Vynda-K. But even the Graff is being targeted on Ribos by a pair of con men who hope he’ll pay handsomely for directions which will supposedly lead him to a lost mine containing enough of the mineral jethrik to fund his operation. And when everyone’s plans are exposed, they believe the Doctor and Romana are the responsible party.

Season 16 Regular Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Mary Tamm (Romana), John Leeson (voice of K-9)

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Robert Holmes
directed by George Spenton-Foster
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Iain Cuthbertson (Garron), Nigel Plaskitt (Unstoffe), Paul Seed (Graff Vynda-K), Robert Keegan (Sholakh), Prentis Hancock (Captain), Timothy Bateson (Binro), Ann Tirard (Seeker), Cyril Luckham (White Guardian)

Broadcast from September 2 through 23, 1978

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who Fan Films

Downtime

This is a fan-made production whose storyline may be invalidated by later official studio productions.

NeWorld University, a new high-tech campus in central London, has attracted the attention of reporter Sarah Jane Smith. She visits to ask a few pointed questions about the school’s cult-like atmosphere, but is rebuffed by the new headmistress and her persistent assistant. As Sarah leaves, they begin looking into her background, including her association with UNIT. In the meantime, retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who left UNIT behind years ago and has even recently retired from teaching, experiences unusual visions of a woman in black – a woman Sarah knows as NeWorld’s headmistress. Daniel Hinton, a former pupil of Lethbridge-Stewart’s and now a NeWorld student, escapes from NeWorld with some damaging information, and the headmistress mobilizes an army of students to track him down. Hinton escapes and is protected by a homeless man who also happens to be an ex-Army officer – but Hinton also figures prominently in the Brigadier’s visions. Lethbridge-Stewart is surprised by a phone call from his estranged daughter Kate, who – like many other perfectly normal civilians – are growing increasingly paranoid of the appearance of “chillys” (zombie-like NeWorld students) around the country. Kate also introduces him to a grandson he didn’t know he had. As the evidence of some vast conspiracy continues to build up, the Brigadier and Sarah follow entirely different paths to the same conclusion. The Great Intelligence, the disembodied consciousness that terrorized London with its robotic Yeti in 1968 (and was defeated by the Doctor with Lethbridge-Stewart’s help) is back, and it is once again weaving its web of mind control, this time through the internet. This time the Doctor isn’t around to fight the Great Intelligence and its new servants – Victoria Waterfield, a former companion of the Doctor, and Professor Travers, whose research into yeti sightings led him into the Intelligence’s trap. The Brigadier may be forced to kill old friends to ensure that his grandson’s world has a future.

written by Marc Platt
directed by Christopher Barry
music by Ian Levine, Nigel Stock and Erwin Keiles

Cast: Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Deborah Watling (Victoria Waterfield), Jack Watling (Professor Travers), Beverley Cressman (Kate Lethbridge-Stewart), Mark Trotman (Daniel Hinton), Geoffrey Beevers (Harrods), Peter Silverleaf (Christopher Rice), John Leeson (Anthony), Miles Richardson (Captain Cavendish), James Bree (Lama), Kathy Coulter (Receptionist), Alexander Landen (Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart), Jonathan Clarkson (Chilly #1), Miles Cherry (Chilly #2), Richard Landen (Lead Yeti), David Howe (Yeti), Tony Clark (Yeti), Conrad Turner (Yeti), Stephen Bradshaw (UNIT Soldier), Keith Brooks (UNIT Soldier), Mark Moore (UNIT Soldier), Gabriel Mykaj (UNIT Soldier), John Reddingston (UNIT Soldier)

Review: Delayed in its production and release, Downtime was originally intended for a 1993 debut to coincide with Doctor Who’s 30th anniversary, but when it looked like an official BBC direct-to-video TV movie called The Dark Dimension might actually be produced (with all of the surviving TV Doctors, no less), the fans backing the production of Downtime let the schedule slide. It’s a pity, as the only member of their cast who would’ve had a conflicted schedule was Nicholas Courtney (aka Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), and in the end, Dark Dimension never got off the ground. Downtime made for a better anniversary reunion anyway, concentrating on the series’ well-loved stable of favorite guest stars rather than the Doctor himself.

Categories
4th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Demon Quest Part 1: The Relics Of Time

Doctor Who: The Relics Of TimeThe Doctor returns to Nest Cottage for a break from his travels, but when he’s ready to set off into time and space once more, he’s horrified to discover that his housekeeper, Mrs. Wibbsey, has sold a component of the TARDIS at a local charity sale. And there’s another mystery: a photograph of a first-century tile mosaic clearly depicting the Doctor’s face. Free to travel in time but relatively fixed in space because of the missing spatial geometer, the Doctor and Mrs. Wibbsey travel back to the first century where they are mistaken for Druids with supernatural powers – and during an attempt to pass herself off as a seer, Mrs. Wibbsey says some unusual things about a wizard with a demonic pet. Under threat of their own deaths, the Doctor and Mrs. Wibbsey are sent to slay the wizard and his beast. Instead, they find a strangely genial Roman Emperor from the wrong period of history who knows far more about the future than he should.

Order this CDwritten by Paul Magrs
directed by Kate Thomas
music by Simon Power

Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Susan Jameson (Mrs. Wibbsey), Nigel Anthony (Claudius), Kate Sachs (Female Warrior), Rupert Holliday Evans (Male Warrior), Richard Franklin (Mike Yates)

Timeline: after Hive Of Horror and before The Demon Of Paris, and probably still before The Ribos Operation

Notes: Nest Cottage, in the village of Hexford, seems to be the fourth Doctor’s retreat from his time travels, but since his third incarnation, the Doctor has also maintained a (usually unoccupied) residence on Allen Road in Kent, a story development that gave the Doctor a base of operations in several pieces of ’90s Doctor Who novels and comics.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Season 4: Miracle Day Torchwood

The Gathering

TorchwoodTwo months after death ends on a widespread scale, the global economy crashes hard. Rex has returned to the CIA, but Esther and Jack are hiding out in Scotland, while Gwen hides her father – still a category 1 who would normally be on the brink of death – from the authorities and resorts to drugstore smash-and-grabs to obtain the drugs needed to keep him comfortable. But Rex has his suspicions that someone within the CIA is sabotaging his attempts to trace the source of the miracle, or find any sign of the three families. Having shaken off his Phi-Corp PR handler, Oswald Danes unexpectedly turns up in Wales, claiming to know the name of the man who caused the miracle. Jack and Esther join Gwen in Wales to hear Danes’ information, only to find that it’s not the useful piece of information they expected – and yet it may reveal more than they think. Esther alerts Rex to their findings, and the team splits up: Jack and Gwen, reluctantly bringing Oswald Danes with them (mainly so Rhys won’t kill him), follow a lead to Shanghai, while Rex and Esther follow a lead to Buenos Ares. Still wounded from being shot escaping from Angelo Colasanto’s mansion, Jack is bleeding – and his blood is leading Torchwood to the source of the miracle.

Order the DVDsDownload this episodewritten by John Fay
directed by Guy Ferland
music by Murray Gold and Stu Kennedy

Cast: John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), The GatheringEve Myles (Gwen Cooper), Mekhi Phifer (Rex Matheson), Alexa Havins (Esther Drummond), Kai Owen (Rhys Williams), Bill Pullman (Oswald Danes), Lauren Ambrose (Jilly Kitzinger), Sharon Morgan (Mary Cooper), William Thomas (Geraint Cooper), Marina Benedict (Charlotte Willis), John de Lancie (Shapiro), Paul James (Noah Vickers), Teddy Sears (Blue Eyed Man), Frances Fisher (The Mother), Ian Hughes (Finch), Adam Silver (The Young Man), Willis Chung (Chinese Man), Danny Szam (Surveillance Guy), Jesse Wang (Chinese Worker), Gilbert Wynne (Old Man)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
3rd Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Prisoners Of The Lake

Doctor WhoUNIT is called in to an underwater archaeological site, where a team of scientists and other experts are investigating surprisingly advanced ancient ruins on a lake bed. But the ruins aren’t why Captain Mike Yates is there; he’s there to look into a number of missing artifacts from those ruins. The director of the project is surprisingly uncooperative, while Mike finds a more receptive ear among the scientists and dive teams. While he’s there, Mike witnesses the discovery of technology among the ruins, a find which he reports immediately to UNIT – and to the Doctor. The Doctor and Jo arrive promptly, and begin taking an active part in the investigation of the “ruins”, which the Doctor theorizes is a crashed spacecraft. The vehicle is guarded by statue-like robots capable of exerting deadly force. The scientists working on the project are now more determined than ever to get past these defenses to discover what’s inside the ship. The Doctor warns that perhaps the robotic guardians aren’t there to fend off scavengers from Earth, but may be there to protect Earth from what’s aboard their ship…

written by Justin Richards
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Jamie Robertson

Cast: Tim Treloar (The Doctor / Narrator), Katy Manning (Jo Grant), Richard Franklin (Mike Yates), Carolyn Seymour (Freda Mattingly), Robbie Stevens (Johnny Repford / Director Pennard / Statue / Prosecutor), John Banks (Chief Dastron / Lt. Macintyre / UNIT Operative / Archaeologist)

LogBook entry and review by Earl Green