Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Human Resources – Part 1

Doctor Who: Human Resources Part 1The Headhunter has finally gotten Lucie and puts her to work…in an office. Of course, it’s in Telford and she thought she was going to work in London, but it’s a nice enough place and she settles in quickly, having easily gotten over her dreams of travelling through time. Meanwhile, the Doctor finds that his TARDIS won’t work without Lucie (handiwork of the Time Lords) and accepts a time ring as a means to locating her. But Lucie is already finding trouble and even once she gets her memory back via the Doctor, she can’t keep from getting fired. As this involves her finding herself in the middle of an alien jungle during major hostilities, its hardly back to the dole queue on Monday. When the Doctor learns the sinister truth behind the “company” for whom Lucie was working, he tries to throw a spanner in the works only to be thrown himself by who is trying to do business with them. They’re a group with whom the Doctor has had plenty of experience and they give new meaning to the term “hostile takeover”.

Order this CDwritten by Eddie Robson
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by ERS

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Katarina Olsson (Headhunter), Roy Marsden (Hulbert), Nickolas Grace (Straxus), Owen Brenman (Jerry), Louise Fullerton (Karen), Andrew Wisher (Malcolm), Nicholas Briggs (Cybermen)

Notes: Roy Marsden later appeared in the 2007 TV story Smith And Jones.

Timeline: after No More Lies and before Human Resources Part 2

LogBook entry & review by Philip R. Frey

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Human Resources – Part 2

Doctor Who: Human Resources Part 2With the Doctor and Lucie embroiled in a conflict with warmongers on one side and the inhuman Cybermen on the other, the Doctor isn’t sure who he should back. But even as he noodles his way through that question, many more are raised. Who is responsible for this war being fought? Why is it being run in such a peculiar fashion? And what was so important about Lucie that so many people were making so much fuss about her? The answers lead all the way back to the Doctor’s home planet of Gallifrey and, as usual, he’s not going to like them…

Order this CDwritten by Eddie Robson
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by ERS

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Katarina Olsson (Headhunter), Roy Marsden (Hulbert), Nickolas Grace (Straxus), Owen Brenman (Jerry), Louise Fullerton (Karen), Andrew Wisher (Malcolm), Nicholas Briggs (Cybermen)

Timeline: after Human Resources Part 1 and before Dead London

LogBook entry & review by Philip R. Frey

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Girl Who Never Was

Doctor Who: The Girl Who Never WasDevastated after C’rizz makes his exit from the TARDIS crew, and outraged over the Doctor’s apparent lack of emotion about it, Charley decides she’s had enough time travel and wants to return home – even though history records her death aboard the doomed airship R-101. The Doctor tries to surprise her by taking her to her intended destination, Singapore in 1930, but the TARDIS is drawn off course in time, depositing the Doctor and Charley in Singapore in 2008. Now more disgruntled than ever, Charley tries to leave as the Doctor tends to the TARDIS controls to see what caused the time change, instead running into a man named Byron who not only seems to know who she is, but has a gun drawn on her the whole time. The Doctor arrives to foil whatever it is that Byron’s planning, and talks Charley into one last adventure – a trip back in time to the 1940s, and the source of the temporal event that redirected the TARDIS. The trail leads them to a docked sea freighter, but even there something is making a mess of the flow of time. Charley is stuck in the 1940s with a man who looks and sounds exactly like Byron – not a day older or younger – while the Doctor winds up back in 2008, only to find that Byron has staked a claim to this ship. An elderly woman accompanies Byron, and though he initially introduces her as his mother, the Doctor learns that her name is Charlotte Pollard, age 85, and she doesn’t remember anything about traveling in time – and she certainly doesn’t remember the alien invasion force stored in the ship’s hold…at least not until they stand before her, and then she remembers a single word: Cybermen.

Order this CD written by Alan Barnes
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by ERS

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley Pollard), Danny Webb (Byron), Anna Massey (Miss Pollard), Amanda Root (Madeleine Fairweather), David Yip (Curly), Robert Duncan (Borthwick), Natalie Mendoza (Receptionist), Tim Sutton (Colville), Jake McGann (Young Man), Nicholas Briggs (Soldier)

Timeline: after Absolution and before Blood Of The Daleks Part 1 (for the Doctor), after Absolution and before The Condemned (for Charley)

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Kingdom Of Silver / Keepsake

Doctor Who: Kingdom Of Silver / KeepsakeThe Doctor arrives on the planet Tasak, a pre-nuclear industrial civilization struggling to recover from years of civil war. The nation of Argentia helped to bring the fighting to an end by sharing medical and technological advances based on alien technology discovered on a remote island. Having arrived just before a grand summit meeting of all of Tasak’s nations, the Doctor is scrutinized, especially since he’s providing cover for the first person he met on Tasak, an android agent named Temeter. Scouting reports of Cyberman technology that have survived the Orion War, Temeter thinks he knows where the Argentia are getting their unusually advanced technology…and he doesn’t entrust the Doctor with this fact until it’s too late to escape the truth: the island is the site of a Cyberman tomb, and the technology used and distributed by Argentia is helping to prime the entire planet for a Cyberman takeover.

Order this CDwritten by James Swallow
directed by Ken Bentley and Nicholas Briggs
music by David Darlington

Kingdom Of Silver Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Neil Roberts (Temeter), Kate Terence (Sara), Terry Molloy (Magus Riga), James George (Merel), Bunny Reed (Ardith), Holly King (Etin), Nicholas Briggs (Cybermen)

Keepsake Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Neil Roberts (Temeter), Kate Terence (Sara), Terry Molloy (Examiner 2), James George (Corvus), Nicholas Briggs (Examiner 1)

Timeline: between The Death Collectors and…

Notes: The audio Cybermen have suddenly developed a clanking mechanical march – obviously inspired by the sound of the new TV series Cybermen, whose voices are also provided by Big Finish producer Nicholas Briggs.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
2008-2009 Specials Doctor Who New Series Season 04

The Next Doctor

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS lands in London, 1851, at Christmastime, but before the Doctor can even be serenaded by carolers, someone is calling his name. He discovers a woman in an alleyway, but even though he’s arrived to save the day, she doesn’t stop calling for help until another man shows up – another man claiming that he is the Doctor. Some sort of Cyber-converted creature bursts out of a building, leading both Doctors on a wild goose chase until they lose track of it, but then the Doctor – and the Doctor who was already on the case in 1851 – encounter real Cybermen, apparently escaped from the Void. Curiously, this other Doctor remembers nothing of his tenth incarnation, who then discovers why: this Doctor isn’t the man he says he is. But why does he think he’s another incarnation of the Doctor, and what monstrous plans are afoot that involve the Cybermen enslaving the children of London?

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Russell T. Davies
directed by Andy Goddard
music by Murray Gold

Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Davis Morrissey (Jackson Lake), Dervia Kirwan (Miss Hartigan), Velile Tshabalala (Rosita), Rauri Mears (Cybershade), Paul Kasey (Cyberleader), Edmund Kenie (Mr. Scoones), Michael Bertenshaw (Mr. Cole), Jason Morell (Vicar), Neil McDermott (Jed), Ashley Horne (Lad), Tom Langford (Frederic), Jordan Southwell (Urchin), Matthew Allick (Docker), Nicholas Briggs (Cyber voices)

The Next DoctorNotes: While Peter Davison reappeared as the fifth Doctor in Time Crash, and Human Nature‘s Journal of Impossible Things showed sketches of all of David Tennant’s predecessors in the role of the Doctor, The Next Doctor marks the first time that actual footage from the original series or the 1996 TV movie have been incorporated into the new series, with a brief clip of each Doctor. The potential inconsistency of the alternate universe/”Cybus” Cybermen having information about the Doctor’s prior regenerations is avoided with the Doctor’s conjecture that these Cybermen stole the information from the Daleks in the Void, which also explains why few if any of the clips are from Cybermen stories (though they’re not necessarily from Dalek stories either).

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 05

The Pandorica Opens

Doctor WhoA series of events ripples through time and space upon the completion of Vincent Van Gogh‘s latest painting depicting the fiery destruction of the TARDIS. Many of the Doctor’s friends and allies encounter the painting through time, from Winston Churchill to Liz 10 to, finally, River Song. River draws the Doctor to Earth at the time of the Roman Empire to show him the painting, which she believes is a warning Van Gogh received in a vision. Within the painting itself is a time and a location, leading the Doctor, Amy and River to Stonehenge.

The Doctor finds a chamber beneath Stonehenge, containing a large, cubical object of alien origin: the Pandorica, something which River has mentioned before but the Doctor believed was a myth. But before the Doctor can investigate or open the Pandorica, dozens of alien ships descend into the sky over Stonehenge: many of the Doctor’s enemies have come to call. While he bluffs his would-be captors into leaving, River attempts to move the TARDIS closer to the Pandorica, but the timeship begins behaving erratically and is flung violently through the time vortex. It begins to seem as though the Doctor is destined not to be at the controls of the TARDIS when it suffers the fate forseen by Van Gogh.

The Doctor’s enemies return to Stonehenge, and only then does the Doctor realize the horrifying truth: the Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans and many more have set aside their differences to conspire against their greatest enemy. With their combined forces against him, the Doctor may be doomed, and the universe along with him.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Toby Haynes
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Alex Kingston (River Song), Arthur Darvill (Rory), Tony Curran (Vincent), Bill Paterson (Bracewell), Ian McNeice (Winston Churchill), Sophie Okonedo (Liz Ten), Marcus O’Donovan (Claudio), Clive Wood (Commander), Christopher Ryan (Commander Stark), Ruari Mears (Cyber Leader), Paul Kasey (Judoon), Howard Lee (Doctor Gachet), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek), Simon Fisher Becker (Dorium), Joe Jacobs (Guard), Chrissie Cotterill (Madame Vernet), David Fynn (Marcellus), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek / Cyberman / Judoon voices)

The Pandorica OpensNotes: This marks the first time Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans have all shared the screen in anything other than a flashback (if one wishes to count flashbacks, however, the first time would have been during the flashbacks experienced by the fourth Doctor at the end of part 4 of Logopolis). Classic Doctor Who aliens name-checked but not seen include Drahvins (Galaxy Four), Zygons (Terror Of The Zygons), and curiously, the Chelonians, a reptilian warrior race introduced in the New Adventures novels published in the 1990s (specifically, in “The Highest Science”). This marks the first time that an element specific to the New Adventures has been acknowledged by the new TV series. The Slitheen are also mentioned, but are not seen.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who

Legend Of The Cybermen

Doctor Who: Legend Of The CybermenThe Doctor’s worst fears are confirmed when he and Jamie are accosted by white robots: they are once again trapped in the Land of Fiction, where fictional characters come to life, but very real damage can be inflicted on visitors fromo outside Fiction. The Artful Dodger comes to the time travelers’ aid, but only when they encounter this character’s cohort do they realize who the real enemy is: Oliver Twist has been converted by Cybermen. The metal giants, trapped in the Land of Fiction by an intelligence that has yet to reveal itself, are laying siege to this dimension and converting the characters inhabiting it. Alice in Wonderland and Dracula have been drafted into service as soldiers, and Captain Nemo and the Nautilus are joining in the fight when it’s convenient to them. But none of them are fighting to defend any kind of real space. Another of the Doctor’s former companions – Zoe – appears and reveals that she is behind the Cyber-war over the Land of Fiction. But when she tells the Doctor how both the Cybermen and the Time Lord were drawn into the Land of Fiction, the Doctor realizes that the turf being fought for so viciously is the mind and soul of his companion.

Order this CDwritten by Mike Maddox
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Jamie Robertson

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon), Wendy Padbury (Zoe), Steven Kynman (Lord Fauntleroy / Artful Dodger), Abigail Hollick (Alice), Ian Gelder (Dracula / Blackbeard), Charlie Ross (The Rebel), Alexander Siddig (Captain Nemo), Nicholas Briggs (The Cybermen)

Timeline: after Wreck Of The Titan, and before the sixth Doctor segment of The Four Doctors

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 06

A Good Man Goes To War

Doctor WhoThe Doctor and Rory hunt tirelessly through time and space to find the real Amy Pond: the Amy who has been aboard the TARDIS since the trip to America has been a Ganger all along. Enlisting the help of unlikely allies – a Sontaran pressed into service as a combat nurse, a Silurian at large in Victorian London, even a fleet of Cybermen – the Doctor gathers an army to help him rescue his kidnapped companion. Held captive by the mysterious Korovian, Amy has already given birth to a daughter, Melody. Fully expecting the Doctor’s arrival, Madame Kovarian has assembled an army of her own, with the deadly headless monks to strike fear into anyone who doubts their duties. Just when the Doctor thinks he’s rescued Amy and her baby without any bloodshed, Kovarian springs her trap: the baby that the Doctor has rescued is a Ganger as well, and Kovarian has Amy’s real baby: a human child with TARDIS-altered DNA that can be traced back to Gallifrey itself, a child Kovarian intends to raise as the perfect weapon to fight the Doctor. Little do the time travelers know that they’ve already met Melody Pond, all grown up.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Peter Hoar
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory), Alex Kingston (River Song), Frances Barber (Madame Kovarian), Charlie Baker (Fat One), Dan Johnston (Thin One), Christina Chong (Lorna Bucket), Joshua Hayes (Lucas), Damian Kell (Dominicus), Neve McIntosh (Madame Vastra), Catrin Stewart (Jenny), Richard Trinder (Captain Harcourt), Annabel Cleare (Eleanor), Henry Wood (Arthur), Dan Starkey (Commander Strax), Simon Fisher-Becker (Dorium Maldovar), Danny Sapani (Colonel Manton), Hugh Bonneville (Henry Avery), Oscar Lloyd (Toby Avery), Nicholas Briggs (voice of the Cybermen)

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 06

Closing Time

Doctor WhoAware that the clock is counting down to his appointment with a killer astronaut in America, the Doctor pays a last visit to his friend Craig, discovering that Craig’s become a dad – and a somewhat befuddled one at that. But no house call from the Doctor ever goes quite as smoothly as planned. Strange power outages have plagued the area, with a local department store at the epicenter of the disturbance. The Doctor does what he has to in order to investigate the store without raising suspicion: he gets a job there. Soon enough, between mentions of a “silver rat” roaming the store and a string of employees going missing, the Doctor discovers that Cybermen are lurking here. The Doctor’s plans for a quiet visit with his friend are further complicated when Craig insists on involving himself in the Doctor’s impending battle with the Cybermen. The lives of the Time Lord’s companions are nearly always in jeopardy, but if the Doctor doesn’t win this time, it could cost a baby his father.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Gareth Roberts
directed by Steve Hughes
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy), Arthur Darvill (Rory), James Corden (Craig Owens), Daisy Haggard (Sophie), Alex Kingston (River Song), Frances Barber (Madame Kovarian), Seroca Davis (Shona), Holli Dempsey (Kelly), Chris Obi (George), Lynda Baron (Val), Paul Kasey (Cyberman), Nicholas Briggs (voice of the Cybermen)

Closing TimeNotes: Craig and Sophie first appeared in the previous season’s The Lodger. Cybermats first appeared in 1967‘s Tomb Of The Cybermen, and were last seen in 1975‘s Revenge Of The Cybermen; they’ve had some dental work done in the intervening years, and arguably need to go back for a second round. Lynda Baron makes her third Doctor Who appearance here: as pirate captain Wrack, she tried to make the fifth Doctor walk the plank in 1983‘s Enlightenment, while her first Doctor Who “appearance” was audio-only, as the unseen vocalist warbling the sung narrative throughout the first Doctor story The Gunfighters in 1966 – which also saw the Doctor wearing a Stetson.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Silver Turk

Doctor WhoThe Doctor brings Mary Shelley to the great exhibition at Vienna in 1873, where he learns that the legendary chess-playing Mechanical Turk is still operating. When he and Mary go to see it, however, the Doctor is appalled to discover that the Turk is actually a severely damaged Mondasian Cyberman. Its “inventor”, a man who performed a repair job that makes Mondasian spare part surgery look elegant by comparison, meets any challenge to the “Turk”‘s legitimacy with extreme hostility, and naturally he and the Doctor quickly find themselves at odds with each other. The Doctor also correctly deduces that a second Cyberman is present on Earth, and Mary finds that a rival inventor has that Cyberman in his possession. If even one of the injured Cybermen can recharge enough to regain full strength, the future of all life on Earth is in jeopardy… so naturally, the Cyberman is lucky enough to speak to a writer of fanciful stories whose imagination can conjure up such ideas as reviving a dead man with lightning.

Order this CD written by Marc Platt
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Jamie Robertson

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Julie Cox (Mary Shelley), Gareth Armstrong (Dr. Johan Drossel), Christian Brassington (Alfred Stahlbaum), David Schneider (Ernst Bratfisch), Gwilym Lee (Count Rolf Wittenmeier), Claire Wyatt (Countess Mitzi Wittenmeier), Nicholas Briggs (Cybermen)

Notes: The Cybermen in The Silver Turk are apparently the first Mondasians to discover Earth since Cyber-conversion changed life on Mondas forever. However, the Doctor stops them from transmitting their findings back to Mondas, presumably delaying their discovery and any potential invasion plans until 1986 (The Tenth Planet). This is only the second time that Mondasian Cybermen have featured in a Big Finish Doctor Who story; the first was in Spare Parts, also written by Marc Platt.

Timeline: after Mary’s Story (part 4 of Company Of Friends) and before Storm Warning

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 07

Nightmare In Silver

Doctor WhoWith Clara’s babysitting charges, Artie and Angie, having discovered her travels in time, she introduces them to the Doctor, who offers to take them aboard the TARDIS for a trip to one of the universe’s most impressive amusement parks, Hedgewick’s World of Wonders. Once there, though, the park is a bit underwhelming, occupied only by Mr. Webley and – to the Doctor’s alarm – what appears to be a severely-damaged Cyberman who plays chess against anyone willing to pay. It turns out that a small man named Porridge is controlling the Cyberman, but the Doctor is still suspicious, and with good reason: Hedgewick’s World is also the home to a tomb of the Cybermen, and they’re evolving new abilities, including downsizing Cybermats into Cybermites to aid in converting unwitting humans into Cybermen. One of the Cybermites manages to gain control of the Doctor himself, and he finds himself fighting for control of his own mind with the consciousness of the Cyber Planner. Clara joins forces with a “punishment platoon” of space soldiers sentenced to patrol the run-down amusement park, but even then she may not be able to save the Doctor – or the children she’s meant to be babysitting.

Order the DVDwritten by Neil Gaiman
directed by Stephen Woolfenden
music by Murray Gold

Doctor WhoCast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Eve de Leon Allen (Angie), Kassius Carey Johnson (Artie), Jason Watkins (Webley), Warwick Davis (Porridge), Tamzin Outhwaite (Captain), Eloise Joseph (Beauty), Will Merrick (Brains), Calvin Dean (Ha-Ha), Zahra Ahmadi (Missy), Aidan Cook (Cyebrman), Nicholas Briggs (voice of the Cybermen)

Notes: Tombs of the Cybermen have been seen in previous episodes, such as Tomb Of The Cybermen (1967) and Attack Of The Cybermen (1985). The Cyber Planner was last encountered in 1968’s The Invasion. Doctor WhoGuest star Warwick Davis (incorrectly credited on-screen as “Warwick Davies”), making his first Doctor Who appearance, is usually associated with the Star Wars franchise, having played such characters as Wicket the Ewok in 1983’s Return Of The Jedi (and two TV movie follow-ups), and a podrace spectator in The Phantom Menace, among other roles. He was also the star of another George Lucas production, the 1988 film Willow.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Series Specials Doctor Who New Series Specials

An Adventure In Space And Time

An Adventure In Space And TimeIn 1963, newly arrived BBC Head of Drama Sydney Newman shakes the stolid BBC establishment with his rebellious attitudes and his desire to make the British broadcaster’s output less posh and more popular. With a 25-minute gap in the Saturday evening schedule to fill, Newman assembles a team to begin working on a new television series called Doctor Who, concerning an eccentric time traveler whose incredibly time-space machine, the TARDIS, is disguised as a 1950s police box. Wanting to appoint a producer to run this show, Newman looks for someone with “piss and vinegar” and settles on Verity Lambert, who had previously worked as his production assistant. But in her new position as the first female producer in the BBC, Verity makes waves… and a few enemies. She bucks conventional wisdom in hiring esteemed character actor William Hartnell to play the part of the Doctor, the show’s wizened and yet ageless time traveler. For his own part, Hartnell has been looking for a role to get him out of a rut of being typecast as tough authority figures and military characters. Verity also finds a willing collaborator in rookie director Waris Hussein, and after months of preparation and planning, Doctor Who is finally in a studio (one of the smallest and least sophisticated at the BBC’s disposal, naturally), though the show is fighting for its life up to the moment of broadcast and beyond.

Order this series on DVDwritten by Mark Gatiss
directed by Terry McDonough
music by Edmund Butt

Cast: David Bradley (William Hartnell), Ross Gurney-Randall (Reg), Roger May (Len), Sam Hoare (Douglas Camfield), Doctor WhoCharlie Kemp (Arthur), Brian Cox (Sydney Newman), William Russell (Harry – Security Guard), Jeff Rawle (Mervyn Pinfield), Andrew Woodall (Rex Tucker), Jessica Raine (Verity Lambert), Jemma Powell (Jacqueline Hill), Lesley Manville (Heather Hartnell), Cara Jenkins (Judith Carney), Sacha Dhawan (Waris Hussein), Toby Hadoke (Cyril), Sarah Winter (Delia Derbyshire), Jamie Glover (William Russell), Claudia Grant (Carole Ann Ford), David Annen (Peter Brachacki), Mark Eden (Donald Baverstock), Ian Hallard (Richard Martin), Nicholas Briggs (Peter Hawkins), Carole Ann Ford (Joyce), Reece Pockney (Alan), Reece Shearsmith (Patrick Troughton), Anneke Wills (Farewell party attendee), Jean Marsh (Farewell party attendee), Anna-Lisa Drew (Maureen O’Brien), Sophie Holt (Jackie Lane)

Notes: Numerous actors appear in this movie who have appeared in actual episodes of Doctor Who before, not least of which are surviving members of the original 1963 cast William Russell and Carole Ann Ford, who played Ian and Susan respectively. David Doctor WhoBradley appeared in the 2012 episode Dinosaurs In A Spaceship as the episode’s villain, while Jessica Raine guest starred in 2013’s Hide. Hartnell-era companions Jean Marsh and Anneke Wills – both of whom reprise their 1960s roles for Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas – appear as partygoers at Verity Lambert’s farewell party. Big Finish Doctor Who producer Nicholas Briggs, the voice of the Daleks in modern Doctor Who, appears (in a wig) as 1960s Dalek voice originator Peter Hawkins.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Time Of The Doctor

Doctor WhoThe Doctor is confronted with a mystery: a powerful signal is emanating from a backwater planet, defying any attempt to translate or decipher it, and luring ships from nearly every spacefaring race to that world. Having salvaged the severed head of a Cyberman to harness its processing power, the Doctor attaches a piece of Gallifreyan communications technology to the head, presumably capable of translating any language, much like the TARDIS herself, and “Handles” promptly identifies the planet from which the signal is transmitting as Gallifrey, though it bears no resemblance to the Doctor’s home planet. The Doctor and Clara are invited to board the first ship to have arrived here, the Papal Mainframe of the Church. The head of the Church, Tasha Lem, reveals the true name of the mystery planet: Trenzalore. The Papal Mainframe is protecting Trenzalore with a force field, but all hell will break loose the moment that the other ships realize that not only has someone been granted access to the planet, but that someone happens to be the Doctor. Upon first setting foot on Trenzalore, the Doctor and Clara find that others lie in wait, including Weeping Angels. They narrowly escape, and this time the Doctor insists on visiting Trenzalore on his terms, using the TARDIS instead of Tasha Lem’s teleport. The signal emanates from a large crack in the wall of a church tower on Trenzalore, shaped like the crack that the Doctor witnessed numerous times during his early travels with Amy and Rory. The signal is in the Gallifreyan language, repeating one question over and over: “Doctor who?” – the question that the Doctor has been warned must never be answered. Soon, the occupants of the many ships orbiting Trenzalore lose their patience, and try to invade the planet, only to find that the Doctor has given up his travels in space and time to defend it. Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Weeping Angels and others attempt to land on Trenzalore, and are either driven back into space or destroyed.

Involuntarily returned to Earth by the TARDIS, Clara tries to resume her day-to-day life, only to be visited by Tasha Lem, piloting the Doctor’s timeship. She wants Clara to return to Trenzalore. Hundreds of years after he last saw her, the Doctor is dying of old age, able to regenerate no more. Tasha Lem wants Clara to visit him because the Doctor shouldn’t have to die alone.

But yet another force in the universe seems to believe that the Doctor shouldn’t have to die at all.

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Jamie Payne
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Orla Brady (Tasha Lem), James Buller (Dad), Elizabeth Rider (Linda), Sheila Reid (Gran), Doctor WhoMark Anthony Brighton (Colonel Albero), Rob Jarvis (Abramal), Tessa Peake-Jones (Marta), Jack Hollington (Barnable), Sonita Henry (Colonel Meme), Kayvan Novak (voice of Handles), Tom Gibbons (Young Man), Ken Bones (Voice), Aidan Cook (Cyberman), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek/Cyberman voices), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek 1), Nicholas Pegg (Dalek 2), Ross Mullan (Silent), Dan Starkey (Sontaran), Karen Madison (Weeping Angel), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Peter Capaldi (The Doctor)

Notes: Daleks, Cybermen (including a unique Cyberman made of wood, echoing the King and Queen from The Doctor, The Widow, And The Wardrobe), Sontarans and Angels are seen to attempt landing on Trenzalore; others, such as the Terileptils (seen in only one story, 1982’s The Visitation), are mentioned by name only. Silurian Ark ships (Dinosaurs On A Spaceship) are also seen besieging Trenzalore. The device the Doctor attaches to “Handles” is indeed a communications device given to the Master by the High Council of Gallifrey before venturing into the Death Zone with orders to rescue the Doctor (The Five Doctors, 1983); the significance Doctor Whoof this reference lies in what happened before the Master was given that device in The Five Doctors: he was offered “a complete new life cycle” of regenerations, something which one may infer has been granted to the Doctor by the end of this story. The Punch & Judy-style puppet show performed on Trenzalore recounts the Doctor’s misadventures with the one-eyed Monoids in The Ark (1965).

The Silence, seen throughout the eleventh Doctor’s era, are part of the Church, and stand with the Doctor to defend Trenzalore; the Silents that pestered the Doctor in seasons past (The Impossible Astronaut, Day Of The Moon, The Wedding Of River Song) were part of a rogue task group led by Madame Kovarian to prevent the Doctor from ever reaching this point; obviously that group was not successful, even when they took great pains to kidnap infant Melody Pond to program her to assassinate the Doctor. The cracks, first glimpsed in The Eleventh Hour (and, in that story, attributed to Prisoner Zero), are apparently the Time Lords attempting to signal their location to the Doctor so he can retrieve Gallifrey and return it to its proper place in reality.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
2022-2023 Specials Doctor Who New Series Season 13 (Flux)

The Power Of The Doctor

Doctor WhoThe Doctor, Yaz, and Dan intercept a Cybermaster attack force as it launches an assault on a hyperspace train. The Cybermasters are targeting a container holding a Gallifreyan girl. During the battle, Dan barely survives a breach of his spacesuit helmet, and decides to leave the TARDIS and resume a life that, while it may be less exciting, is also far less dangerous. On Earth, former time travelers Ace and Tegan now work for UNIT, each of them chasing down different unusual events: Tegan is trying to retrace the steps of seismologists who have gone missing, while Ace is investigating a series of paintings that have been abruptly removed from public display. The Doctor receives a warning from a Dalek of an imminent attack on Earth, and, surprisingly, an offer of information to prevent that attack. But the message ends before any useful information can be conveyed, and the Doctor’s attention returns to tracking down the Gallifreyan child… and the fact that there’s suddenly an extra planet near Earth’s orbit in the year 1916 – the same year in which the Master is posing as Rasputin in Russia.

The Doctor and Yaz visit the extraneous planet, finding that the Gallifreyan child is simply a disguise employed by a Qurunx, a powerful sentient energy being chained to a Cyber-conversion planet by the Master and the Cybermen. But before the Doctor can unravel that mystery, the TARDIS is summoned to UNIT HQ in 2022, where Kate Lethbridge-Stewart needs the Doctor’s expertise on the parallel mysteries of the missing paintings and missing seismologists, which seem like a distraction from the events in 1916…until the Master’s hand is detected in the disappearances as well. The Doctor is briefly, awkwardly reunited with Ace and Tegan, but soon resumes the chase, tracking down the Master in Naples, and discovering he is responsible for killing the missing seismologists. UNIT takes the Master into custody, but this is exactly what he wants, as this allows him to bring an entire Cyber invasion force directly into UNIT HQ. The Doctor and Yaz, however, have already left again, once again following a lead from the Dalek’s message, leaving Ace and Tegan to try to help fend off the Cyberman attack. As Yaz anticipates, the Dalek message proves to be a trap. The Doctor is taken back to 1916 Russia, where the Master instigates a forced regeneration during which his consciousness is forced into the Doctor’s body, as Yaz is helpless to watch.

But the Doctor’s friends and allies, past and present, are legion. Yaz, with help from Vinder, Ace, and Graham, and with some helpful advice from a hologram of the Doctor, reverses the forced regeneration and thwarts the Daleks’ plan, and arrive just in time to see Tegan and Kate Stewart end the attempted Cyberman invasion. Even the Qurunx is freed. As the Doctor’s former companions return to their normal lives, Yaz prepares to return to hers, as the Doctor’s body, as a result of the trauma caused by the forced regeneration, is once more wearing a bit thin.

Order the DVDwritten by Chris Chibnall
directed by Jamie Magnus Stone
music by Segun Akinola

Doctor Who: The Power Of The DoctorCast: Jodie Whittaker (The Doctor), Mandip Gill (Yasmin Khan), John Bishop (Dan Lewis), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Janet Fielding (Tegan Jovanka), David Bradley (The Doctor), Colin Baker (The Doctor), Peter Davison (The Doctor), Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Jo Martin (The Doctor), David Tennant (The Doctor), Sacha Dhawan (The Master), Jemma Redgrave (Kate Stewart), Jacob Anderson (Vinder), Bradley Walsh (Graham O’Brien), Patrick O’Kane (Ashad), Joe Sims (Deputy Marshal Arnhost), Sanchia McCormack (Train Marshal Halaz), Danielle Bjelic (Curator), Anna Andresen (Alexandra), Richard Dempsey (Nicholas), Jos Slovick (Messenger), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voices / Cybermen voices), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek), Nicholas Pegg (Dalek), Simon Carew (Cyberman), Jon Davey (Cyberman), Chester Durrant (Cyberman), Mickey Lewis (Cyberman), Felix Young (Cyberman), Richard Price (Cyberman), Andrew Cross (Cyberman), Matt Doman (Cyberman), Bonnie Langford (Melanie Bush), Katy Manning (Jo Jones), William Russell (Ian Chesterton)

Doctor Who: The Power Of The DoctorNotes: This marks the first televised appearance of Tegan and Ace since their final TV appearances, in Resurrection Of The Daleks (1984) and Survival (1989), respectively. Dialogue for both characters seems to contradict adventures chronicled in other media. Ace says the last time she saw the Master, he was “half cat” (which would seem to indicate she hasn’t seen him since Survival, contradicting the New Adventures novel First Frontier); Tegan hasn’t seen the Doctor in 38 years, contradicting the Big Finish audio story The Gathering, which reunited an older Tegan with the fifth Doctor in 2006. However, the Master’s description of Ace’s eventual falling-out with the seventh Doctor lines up well with both the 1992 New Adventures novel Love And War and the later Big Finish audio adaptation of that novel, so perhaps this is something to blame on the wibbly-wobbliness of time. Tegan and Ace aren’t the only companions making their first appearances in a very long time; Melanie was last seen in Dragonfire (1987), and Ian Chesterton was last seen in The Chase (1966), winning William Russell the official Guinness World Record for the longest time between television appearances as the same character (56 years). Jo Jones (formerly Jo Grant), on the other hand, had made a relatively recent appearance in The Sarah Jane Adventures (The Death Of The Doctor, 2011). All of these actors, however, have been reprising their roles for Big Finish audio productions for many years. The Doctor says the Master couldn’t “corral Daleks and Cybermen” (see also: Frontier In Space and The Five Doctors, respectively). The Master also tried to forcibly steal the Doctor’s body in the 1996 TV movie, though in that instance the process was interrupted. Other than being the finale for Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor and Chris Chibnall as showrunner, The Power Of The Doctor was also intended to celebrate 100 years of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

LogBook entry by Earl Green