The Mark of the Rani review [Pip and Jane Baker]

The Doctor goes to the year - umm, see below - and encounters the Master (disguised as a scarecrow for reasons), the Rani (armed with an interesting spec and some of the worst dialogue) and a cavalcade of incomprehensible Englishmen. And to top it off, he's accompanied by Peri.

When and Where: The "where" is Killingworth, England. The "when" is a little more complicated. As Thomas Liddell is Lord Ravensworth at this point, this story must take place after 17th July 1821. Humphry Davy died on 28th May, 1829 and is to be in attendance of the meeting at Killingworth, meaning that this is before 29th May 1829. The season is clearly autumn, so this story takes place in an autumn between 1821 and 1828.

In terms of subjective timelines, for the Doctor and Peri this is at some point between Vengeance on Varos and The Two Doctors. For the Master it's between Winter and The Ultimate Foe and for the Rani it's some time before Time and the Rani.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "What's he up to now? It'll be something devious and over-complicated. He'd get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line."
• "They're carnivores. What harm have the animals in the fields done them? The rabbits they snare, the sheep they nourish to slaughter. Do they worry about the lesser species when they sink their teeth into a lamb chop?" It's hardly groundbreaking but for a Pip and Jane script this is practically poetry.
• What is Peri's character spec? After you've listed American, whiny and supremely unfashionable, all you have left is "botanist". Like Mel after her, who despite being a computer programmer never exercised any real skill with computers on TV, Peri almost never gets the chance to show any knowledge in her supposed field. This is one such example, where Peri gets to talk about the native plants and animals and, for a short amount of time, feels like she has had experiences outside of her tenure as a companion. It's important that companions get the opportunity to show individual skills that we've not seen from their predecessors. It makes them less interchangeable.
  
• We've had the suave Master, the trickster that is the Monk and the power-hungry War Chief. The latest addition to the ever-increasing list of renegade Time Lords is the Rani. Like the Monk, she isn't evil - she's a chemist who's pursuing scientific research to quench her own professional curiosity, but without any morality or care for her test subjects. It's a far more interesting stance than the pantomime Ainley Master and makes her one of the more notable villains of the recent seasons.
• The Rani's TARDIS is beautiful but has the side effect of making the Doctor's and the Master's TARDISes look incredibly basic as a result. Couldn't the Doctor have made off in this one at the end?
• Horrifically unnatural dialogue isn't Pip and Jane's only forte: they're also very good at writing the Sixth Doctor, which they will do again in Terror of the Vervoids and The Ultimate Foe.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation: Pip and Janeisms:
• "You suspect another motive?" Are we sure this is Peri? It must be some sort of switch like Amy's Flesh avatar in series 6.
• "Spare me the dubious pragmatism."
• "Fortuitous would be a more apposite epithet!"
• "Murderous would be more apt." Definitely not Peri.
• "Who's this brat?"
• "Doctor? Do you get his drift?"
• "Finito TARDIS. How's that for style?"
• "All the way down. To the bottom."
• "Grandiose schemes of ruling the universe will mean nothing if that dilettante Doctor is still at large."
• "Now perhaps you'll accept there are more things in heaven and earth than are ever dreamed of in your barren philosophy."
• "I'm a scientist. I've calculated the odds, and they and not idiotic pride dictate my actions." / "You intellectual microbe."
• The dodgy accents of the English working class are often incomprehensible. It's truly terrible and makes the admittedly believable setting lose any and all credibility.
• One of the more interesting parts of this story is Miasimia Goria, a planet over which the Rani reigns and whose people are restless and aggressive because of her experiments. What are we doing in a dull Industrial Revolution village filled with accents less convincing than Nicola Bryant's when this is going on? A sleepless and lawless planet is infinitely more interesting a setting.
• Another plotline, albeit a retread of The King's Demons, is the Master deciding to change the course of history upon learning of the gathering in Killingworth. Unlike Miasimia Goria, this has absolutely no bearing on the story and is very quickly forgotten about.
• Peri's dress is vile. Truly, truly vile.
• The violence of the Luddites is wholly unconvincing, with the tapping of the chain the Doctor clings to in the pit being particularly awful.
• Another TARDIS malfunction?
• This story was so boring that it's taken more than a month to write this.

I'll Explain Later:

• Kew Gardens wasn't open until 1840. Why was the Doctor trying to land there in the 1820s? And why in the autumn when the outdoor gardens would be much less impressive?
• Why is the Master a scarecrow and what does he have against birds? In fact, what's he doing in the 1820s in the first place?
• How does the Rani know about the events of Planet of Fire and the Master's supposed end?
• Why does the Master refer to the Doctor's time machine as "the TARDIS"?
• What was Peri thinking pushing the Doctor down the hill?
• How come the Doctor's key can open the Rani's TARDIS?

His Constant Companion: The Master kills a dog and a man with his Tissue Compression Eliminator. One of the peasants falls down the well. The Master kills one of the Rani's assistants. The Rani kills three of her goons.

This Reminds Me...:

• We visit Miasimia Goria in Planet of the Rani.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: It's been almost two months since I reviewed Vengeance on Varos. Why has it been so long? Because The Mark of the Rani was so boring and so awful that I found myself no longer enjoying writing reviews and almost stopped completely. Gosh, is it bad. The Rani is a good idea but this story is plagued with elements that go nowhere, atrocious dialogue, poor performances and a complete lack of any sparkle. I might have to rethink my position as a season 22 apologist. As a Sixth Doctor fan, this is embarrassing. This story is terrible and earns itself an F.

Doctor Who (Season 22)

Vengeance on Varos  |  The Mark of the Rani  |  The Two Doctors

Vengeance on Varos review [Philip Martin]

The Varosians are a people bordering on destitution, kept in abeyance by the government's endless stream of televised torture and executions. But then the Doctor and Peri land on Varos, looking for a precious mineral the worth of which the people of Varos don't have the faintest idea, and Sil of the Galatron Mining Corporation will do anything to keep it that way.

When and Where: Early 24th century Varos (assuming Peri is right in saying that the guest cast were all born almost 300 years after 1984). For the Doctor and Peri this isn't long after Attack of the Cybermen, although they've had the time to visit the frozen plains of Yuin 9, and is an indeterminate amount of time before The Mark of the Rani. For Sil this is a number of years before Mission to Magnus.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "This governor calls a punch-in every time he wants to change his trousers. The sooner he gets ruled out, the better." / "What would the next one do different?" / "Everything. Anything."
• "You've only got one life. You'll age here in the Tardis and then die. Me, I shall go on regenerating until all my lives are spent."
• "He's the worst governor we've had since. Well, since-" "Since the last one?"
• "I find the G-forces of this Varos-size world quite excessive."
• "If we can obtain enough Zeiton-7 to realign the transpower system, the TARDIS will be like... Well, as she was."
• "Sil's language transposer has an eccentric communication circuit, but don't tell him. It's my only amusement."
• "The cameras are still functioning…let the show begin. I want to hear them scream until I’m deaf with pleasure. To see their limbs twist in excruciating agony. Ultimately their blood must gush and flow along the gutters of Varos. The whole planet must delight in their torture and death."
• "And that, fellow citizens of Varos, is my vowed intention. For without justice and peace and tolerance, we have no future. I know you will all work as hard as I shall for a glorious tomorrow. Thank you for allowing me into your homes. Thank you."
• It's a dystopian world so there's an oppressive government. The two things go hand-in-hand. This episode, however, subverts this expectation by having the Governor be the real victim of both the elite and the populace - the elite manipulate him for their own agendas and the public are able to physically punish him if they disagree with him. It's an original idea and provides some very good political commentary, with Arak hating whoever is governor and saying that everything they're doing is wrong. Each Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is treated the same way, being called the worst the country's had and saying that their successor should do everything differently. Having us sympathise with the Governor is one of those clever things that Doctor Who does sometimes that deserves so much more recognition than it gets.
  
• Before we had Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, we had reality TV as a theme in Vengeance on Varos. It's a chilling prediction of the future in the same way as the film Shock Treatment is, with the people of Varos living their lives glued to screens and, when reality TV is taken from them, they don't know what to do. The existence of reality TV has taken away the Varosians' need to have their own lives and they're (almost entirely) happy with that. Arak and Etta are a great addition to the script showing us all what we ourselves do, like complaining about things baselessly and without any thought.
• Every now and then in Doctor Who, we get breakout villains that are too good not to return. The Daleks, the Cybermen, the Ice Warriors, the Great Intelligence, the Silurians, the Sontarans, Davros... and now Sil. He's not nearly as dangerous of any of the aforementioned but he's a character afforded a great deal of funny dialogue and extraordinarily well-performed by Nabil Shaban, providing his iconic and unusual laugh. His costume, too, is one of the more memorable and inspired of recent seasons. My boyfriend might hate him for reasons I don't understand, but I doubt many people were surprised when Sil's return was hastily pencilled in for season 23. He's a great character here and his return in Mindwarp is a welcome one.
• I can understand a lot of the reasons why a significant portion of the Doctor Who fanbase don't like the Sixth Doctor's criminally brief era, but one that I will never accept is saying that Colin Baker can't act. The cliff-hanger to episode one is one of my favourites of all time and it's almost definitely the best of this season, with the Doctor crawling on the floor rapidly dehydrating. It's a very convincing performance of what could easily have been embarrassing and ineffective in the hands of another actor - he really does convince that he's dying, even though we know he obviously won't.
• A common complaint about this story is the acidbath scene, but I couldn't disagree more. The Doctor clearly had no intention of killing either of the guards, with the first being accidentally pushed by the second and the second being pulled in by the first. Perhaps his James Bond one-liner was a little blasé, but the deaths were an accident and there's a look of revulsion on his face as he watches them dissolve.
  

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "You even managed to burn dinner last night." / "I have never said I was perfect." / "If you recall, last night I was supposed to have a cold supper." Is this humour?
• "I think he needs more than water, Peri, eh?" / "Like cyanide." Chill out, Peri. 
• The Sixth Doctor has a number of obstacles in the way of winning the confidence and hearts of the audience already, what with his outlandish costume, his brashness and the memory of The Twin Dilemma. Having Peri list a numerous off-screen examples of his incompetence just makes it that much more difficult to believe that this is the Time Lord we know and love and that Attack of the Cybermen did a reasonably good job of proving. He's caused electrical fires, a total power failure, a near-collision with asteroids, gotten lost in the TARDIS corridors, wiped the memory of the flight computer, jettisoned three-quarters of the storage hold and burnt dinner, all since leaving Telos. His calling Peri by a number of his previous companions' names (as mentioned in Attack of the Cybermen) can be forgiven since he'd only recently regenerated, but these continued examples of his idiocy hardly a Doctor make. The Eleventh Doctor not knowing the intricacies of the TARDIS console (as seen in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone and The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon) is funny, shows us how good River is as piloting the ship and is forgivable because, despite his inelegance, he too can fly it and isn't incompetent.
• Arguably one of the biggest issues with season 22 and the forty-five minute format is that it takes the length of your average classic Who episode for the Doctor and Peri to arrive at their destination. They hang around in the console room, bicker and then encounter some sort of problem with the TARDIS as the script writer struggles for reasons to keep the pair from this week's setting before finally arriving twenty-five minutes in. It allows for the world to be explored in their absence and for the setting to be properly and fully established before the TARDIS lands, but is it really impossible to do that with the Doctor and Peri there? The TARDIS isn't an impressive set and having it feature so much with so few things of interest happening in them almost takes the magic of the TARDIS away. It becomes too domestic and regular.
  
• We're told that the Varosian elite are living in luxury by Areta and that discovering this is why Jondar is being tortured. However, we see nothing of this, with the scenes of the Governor and his Chief Officer being set in locations just as dingy and depressing as those with Arak and Etta. If we're to believe this we really have to see it, otherwise there seems to be little if any class divide between the descendants of the guards and those of the inmates.
• In Attack of the Cybermen the Doctor killed a number of Cybermen, one using his sonic lance and the others with a cyber-gun. These can be excused by the fact that the Earth and the billions of people who lived there (as well as the sleeping Silurians) were at risk of total annihilation. What I do take issue with is the Doctor setting up the laser in this episode in such a way that the guards could easily (and do) walk into it accidentally and die.

I'll Explain Later:

• Who's having their vengeance on Varos? Is it the vengeance of the Varosians upon the Galatron Mining Company? I'm not sure I buy that.
• The TARDIS can warn the crew (in an unusual and ineffective way, admittedly) about the fast return switch (The Edge of Destruction) but not that it's running low on fuel? 
• In The Day of the Doctor, we learn that the Doctor's promise to himself was to "never be cruel or cowardly. Never give up. Never give in." How come the Doctor gives up and gives in so quickly after the TARDIS runs out of fuel?
• Zeiton-7 is needed for every TARDIS yet the Varosians aren't aware of its value? Do Time Lords buy it from third-parties like Galatron or do they only get it from Varos's future?
• Who were the cannibals?
• Why is the Galatron invasion cancelled? Surely owning Varos is far more important than whatever scarce supply could be mined from an asteroid.

What's in a Name?: Planned titles for this story include Domain or Planet of Fear, but the latter was too similar to season 21's Planet of Fire.

His Constant Companion: The Doctor leaves a laser on that kills a Varosian guard. Rondel is unceremoniously shot by a guard after serving his purpose to the plot. One guard is accidentally knocked into the acidbath before pulling in his friend. The Doctor gets Jondar to kill the Chief Officer, Quillam and a guard with the death-vines.

This Reminds Me...:

• Jondar's torture is similar to the torture the Ninth Doctor will endure in Dalek.
• "Water me!" "Moisturise me!"

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Vengeance on Varos is one of my least favourite stories of Doctor Who, not because it's an atrocious mess like Time and the Rani or as mundane as Fear Her but because it's got so many genius ideas mixed with a whole lot of... unimpressiveness. The script is decent with some outstanding dialogue and Colin Baker gives his best performance yet, alongside a stellar guest cast (Nicola Bryant's fine, but I'm really not a fan of Peri), with Martin Jarvis as the Governor and Nabil Shabhan as Sil being the highlights. At this point, there's no doubt that Colin is the Doctor. The sympathetic Governor and the role of television is true genius and I can't commend Philip Martin enough. The problem with this story isn't the violence, which I think is largely a non-issue, but it's that it's not always that entertaining. A script can be as clever as you like, but if it isn't entertaining then it's missing the mark and this story is guilty of running around in circles and perhaps being a little too dark for its own good. Ultimately, Vengeance on Varos is okay and, although I wish I could rate it higher, earns itself a C.

Doctor Who (Season 22)

Attack of the Cybermen  |  Vengeance on Varos  |  The Mark of the Rani

Attack of the Cybermen review ["Paula Moore"]

In 1986, the Cybermen were thwarted in their plan to restore Mondas to the solar system by the First Doctor. In 1985, the Sixth Doctor and Peri must stop time-travelling Cybermen from destroying the Earth and preventing their defeat.

What's in a Name?: The Cybermen never really attack at any point. They defend themselves against the Cryons, kill those who enter the sewers to preserve their secret and plan to use Halley's Comet to destroy Earth but they never really do any actual attacking. Perhaps it should have been called Convolution of the Cybermen.

When and Where: The Doctor and Peri land in Shoreditch, 1985. This isn't long after The Twin Dilemma, as the Doctor is still recovering from Jaconda, and is shortly before Vengeance on Varos. For the Cybermen, this is between The Tomb of the Cybermen and Scorpius. For Lytton, this is a year after Resurrection of the Daleks.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "A little gratitude wouldn't irretrievably damage my ego."
• "More bulges than an antenatal clinic."
• "That's bonkers." / "That's debatable. It's also the truth."
• "You said you came from Fulham!"
• "Lytton? Tall, lean, dark, well-spoken? The sort of man who might shoot his mother just to keep his trigger finger supple?"
• "Please remove your TARDIS from Telos before you need rescuing again."
• In The Twin Dilemma, we were introduced to a thoroughly unpleasant Doctor who suffered bouts of cowardice and paranoia-fuelled murderousness. Damage control has started quite soon with Colin Baker giving a performance that's harder than we'll meet in season 23 but that we can absolutely buy as the Doctor. He's a little prickly towards Peri at the beginning of the first part and isn't as accessible as a character as his predecessors, but he's infinitely more watchable. His scenes with Flast are some of the best of the story and show off the gentle side that we didn't get so much as a glimpse of in his debut appearance.
• If you were to ask a fan to select a John Nathan-Turner character to return for season 22, they'd say Aunt Vanessa, the Ergon or Lady Madge Cranleigh. Okay, maybe not, but Lytton probably wouldn't be one of them either. However, Maurice Colbourne is a talent that it would have been a shame not to see again. This is a character that, in the hands of a lesser actor, could easily be one-dimensional and unconvincing. Instead, he becomes one of the most memorable of the Sixth Doctor's guest stars.
  
• The Cryons might not be the best-realised monsters of all time, but they're a perfect foil for the Cybermen. Airy and sensual to counter the stolid Cybermen with soft feminine voices that contract with the Cybermen's deep and masculine ones. The actresses are handicapped by costumes that not only severely limit their vision but that stand in the way of a believable character with its odd design. They do a great job and help make the second episode easily the best of the two, although I understand that this is an unpopular opinion. Flast's death ends up being one of the most poignant moments of the story, refusing to tell the Cybermen anything and allowing herself to be pulled from the subzero temperature she required to live. Varne dies saving the Doctor and Rost tells him to leave the planet before more had to die for him. It's a topic that's brought up relatively often in New Who ("How many have died in your name?") but not so much pre-2005.
• Classic Doctor Who is almost always overlit. Look at the ship from Four to Doomsday or the sea base of Warriors of the Deep or, in fact, any set from any '80s story. The moodily-lit sewer is a rare example of lighting done right in this era, giving us a more sinister and eerie setting than we're used to with John Nathan-Turner's Doctors. Yes, it's an idea ripped straight from the script of The Invasion, but points for execution.
  

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Next year? That's almost now!"
• "I don’t think I’ve ever misjudged anybody quite as badly as I did Lytton."
• One of the biggest problems with Attack of the Cybermen is the overwhelming and unprecedented amount of continuity, with a lot of the plot relying on elements of The Tenth Planet and The Tomb of the Cybermen. At the time, the public hadn't seen either of these stories since their transmission in the late '60s and almost certainly weren't in the minds of any but the Ian Levine's of the world. To lean so heavily on plot points from so long ago makes this story feel almost like fanfiction and makes it overly complicated and borderline inaccessible to the casual or to the newer viewer. The scene where the main characters are prisoners aboard the TARDIS is laden with exposition.
• The score for this story is truly abominable and easily among the very worst of the show. It's out of place, against the genre and sometimes downright intrusive. It almost brings the whole episode down as a result because it's difficult to take some of the scenes entirely seriously.
• Attack of the Cybermen gets a lot of flak for being too violent. It certainly has a very high body-count, but I don't necessarily object to that. What I do object to is the Doctor's off-screen battery of one of Lytton's constables in the sewer, which is inexcusable violence on the Doctor's behalf. Using a gun against a Cyberman when his own life, as well as the lives of Peri and absolutely everybody on Earth, are at risk is one thing but beating up a human being just isn't the Doctor. What makes it worse is how blasé he is about it afterwards.
  
• A Cyber-Controller, a Cyber-Leader and a Cyber-Lieutenant, each outranking one another... It feels too much and makes the Cybermen feel overly bureaucratic. These are cyborgs that surely shouldn't require so much devolution. Perhaps the Cyber-Lieutenant should have been excised. 
• It's not an issue confined to this story but the Cybermen have far too much personality and too many human mannerisms. They could get away with the mannerisms more in The Tenth Planet where there definitely felt like there was a biological element to them but in The Moonbase, The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Invasion they felt more mechanical. Here they are saying "excellent" and emoting and squabbling and it all feels so wrong. Without the cold calculation, they're just any old monster of the week. Also, the Cyber-Controller's a bit fat.
• Killing off important guest characters is absolutely fine and should even be encourage to raise the stakes and make the villains that much more dangerous and hateable. The problem with Bates and Stratton isn't that they're killed off but that their story, which began in the first episode, never went anywhere and had no resolution or real impact on the plot. Their plan to escape fails when the third accomplice dies and they don't manage to get the head of a Cyberman. They kill another and get one, then head to Cyber-Control with Stratton in a Cyberman suit. They die there. What was the point in this plot thread?
  
• The story ends on a very abrupt note. Cyber-Control blows up, the Doctor says he misjudges Lytton and then the episode ends. If it was going for a Doctor Who and the Silurians ending, it missed the mark with the Doctor's rumination failing to resonate nearly as well as the Third Doctor's reaction to the regrettable murder of the Silurian colony.
• Peri starts off this season in a truly horrific outfit. John Nathan-Turner was clearly doing it for the straight male audience, but having both of our leads in ridiculous costumes makes it very difficult to believe the story. They look their worst in episode one, when they're traversing the mundane streets of London.
• Flast sets fire to a Cyberman's arm and what does it do? It bats at the flames with his gun. What an idiot.

His Constant Companion: The two workmen and Payne are killed in the sewers. A Cyberman is shot by one of Lytton's gang; two are killed on Telos by the escapees; another is killed by the Doctor in the sewers using his sonic lance; and in the TARDIS, Russell shoots one in the head with his own gun and then kills another with a cyber gun. Russell is killed by a tap on the shoulder by a cyber fist. Varne and Rost shot a Cyberman to save Peri. Flast is exposed to temperatures of 15 degrees or above by the Cybermen. Bates, Stratton, Griffiths and Varne are shot. The Cyber-Controller is stabbed by Lytton before the Doctor shoots him and other Cybermen. Lytton dies in this fight. The remaining Cybermen are killed by the explosion of Cyber Control.

I'll Explain Later:

• The Doctor beat up one of Lytton's constables and then handcuffs the other without even trying to question him. Does the Doctor not care about what the constables were up to? Why not at least attempt asking them?
  
• Why are the Cybermen on Earth?
• Did Lytton and the Doctor even meet in Resurrection of the Daleks? Was there an untelevised adventure where they met again? And how would that make sense given that the Doctor describes Lytton as having been an agent of the Daleks the last time they had any interaction?
• If Lytton's transmission has been answered by the Cryons, why is it ongoing?
• The Cryons are on Telos at a point in time after The Tomb of the Cybermen, meaning they're in the 25th or 26th century. How, then, do Lytton and the Cryons communicate? How did they get his transmission?
• How did the Cybermen get into the TARDIS? It's always seemed to be self-locking and enemy-proof.
• Why do the Cybermen hesitate when the Doctor tells them to wait? They were given the order to shoot Peri so shouldn't they carry that out regardless of what her accomplice says?
• Wouldn't saving Mondas be a paradox? It would mean that Telos was never colonised by the Cybermen, meaning they couldn't have saved Mondas.
• Isn't the TARDIS in a state of temporal grace? How did Russell and the Cybermen shoot one another?
• Why do the tombs look nothing like they did in The Tomb of the Cybermen?
• How come the Cybermen are going rogue? What was that all about?
• Peri visited London with the Fifth Doctor in The Kingmaker, yet claims here that it's her first visit to the city. Perhaps she meant her first visit in the modern day.

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor mentions Jaconda, the planet that they visited in season 21 finale The Twin Dilemma.
  
• The Doctor has called Peri by a number of his previous companions' names, including Susan, Jamie, Zoe and Tegan.
• The Doctor has also called her Zodin, the name of a villainess fought by the Second Doctor offscreen. She was mentioned in The Five Doctors.
• Lytton appeared as a Dalek agent in Resurrection of the Daleks.
• The TARDIS materialises in Foreman's Yard, first seen in An Unearthly Child. It will show up again in Remembrance of the Daleks.
• Cybermen were previously seen in the sewers of London in The Invasion.
• Mondas was destroyed in The Tenth Planet.
• Telos and its ice tombs were visited by the Second Doctor in The Tomb of the Cybermen.
• The Cybermen have a ship on the dark side of the Moon, just as they did in The Invasion.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: I will never stop singing the praises of Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, but I was dreading watching this story again. All that I could remember was Lytton's hands, all the continuity (Foreman's Yard - why?) and the Doctor being unpleasant to the whiny and oddly-dressed Peri. I was very surprised to find that it's actually rather good and not nearly as unfocused as I remembered it being. Having fully stabilised, the Doctor is a defined man now and is so much easier to watch. This is helped by the gentle scenes he shares with the Cryons and that he becomes a prisoner of the Cybermen, meaning that we get to see him in a far different position than that of the ultimate authority that he was in The Twin Dilemma. The Cybermen are easily one of the weakest aspects of this story and the second episode is, despite the continuity, better than the first but this is still an okay story. Attack of the Cybermen comes close to a B, but ultimately earns itself a C.

Doctor Who (Season 22)

The Twin Dilemma (Season 21)  |  Attack of the Cybermen  |  Vengeance on Varos

Red Dawn review [Justin Richards]

The Doctor and Peri land on Mars and uncover the tombs of the Ice Warriors. But they aren't the only non-Martians on the planet: the US has sent a team for reasons the Doctor might have something to say about.

When and Where: Mars in the 2000s. For the Doctor and Peri, this takes place between Rulebook and The Eye of the Scorpion as the Doctor has promised Peri an alien world. For the Ice Warriors, it is between Cold War and before Frozen Time.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Your instruments aren't reliable. You're in better shape than the instruments say." / "We know that." / "You do?" / "Yeah. The instruments say we're dead."
• As somebody who didn't even remotely like anything about Perpugilliam Brown ("known as Peri") onscreen, bar her extraordinary death (which was sadly retconned, leaving no redeeming points), this story has opened my mind to the possibility that she might be salvageable, just as Big Finish proved Mel Bush to be. She exhibits botanical knowledge, which she rarely did on TV (similar to Mel and her computer skills), and she's intelligent, observant and even a little witty. Nicola Bryant's accent has improved as well, even if it does still noticeably wander at times.
• The Fifth Doctor and Peri are a fresh pairing ripe for adventures and a developing relationship. The Caves of Androzani was clearly intended to directly follow Planet of Fire (with Peri in the same clothes, referencing Sarn and asking the Doctor about his celery), but given how surprisingly good Peri was in this story I have no complaints about it.
• It's strange to say that the setting of an audio drama is one of the best things about it, but the journeying across the windy surface of Mars, the imagery of the organic shell of the Ice Warrior tombs and the sacrifice of Lord Zzaal under the rising Sun are all wonderfully done.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Save yourself, Doctor."
• Webster is a dull villain. His motives are good enough and certainly could have resulted in more plot, but he's ultimately a forgettably-written character with a forgettable performance. Tanya too is uninteresting despite the revelation that she is a human/Ice Warrior hybrid, which nonsensically allows her to have knowledge of the Martians' culture and technology. It's a twist that she doesn't react to in a realistic or relatable way.
• It was most likely done to differentiate the Ice Warriors given how difficult whispers can be to tell apart, but Commander Zzaal doesn't sound that much like an Ice Warrior bar the little hisses. It makes it difficult to image an Ice Warrior rather than a human delivering these lines. 

I'll Explain Later:

• Will Tanya be able to survive on Mars? Do the Ice Warriors speak English or will she lose her ability to speak to them once the TARDIS is gone?

Later's Arrived: 

• The reason that the Martians use the name "Ice Warriors", a term used by humans to describe them in The Ice Warriors, is that the Fifth Doctor referred to them by it and they adopted it as their own. Another explanation is offered in Lords of the Red Planet which makes more sense given that Iraxxa used the term in Empress of Mars, long before Red Dawn.

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor mentions that the yearometer is on the blink, which it has been since An Unearthly Child.
• The British Mars missions were seen in The Ambassadors of Death.
• The tombs are reminiscent of the Cybermen's on Telos seen in The Tomb of the Cybermen and Attack of the Cybermen.
• The Ice Warriors offer a treaty, much like the proposed human-Silurian treaty in The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: This is a story that began promisingly but turned out to have a thinner plot than expected. NASA is done well, with the shuttle sequences being believable, and both Peri and the visual imagery stirred up by the dialogue, sound design and notably good music are the best things about it. The Ice Warriors aren't always done hugely well and their code of honour can be boring, but they make a decent appearance even if Zzaal's voice isn't quite Ice Warrior-y enough. Ultimately, Red Dawn is a good story deserving of a B.

The Main Range - The Fifth Doctor

The Land of the Dead  |  Red Dawn  |  Winter for the Adept

The Main Range - Peri Brown

Whispers of Terror  |  Red Dawn  |  The Eye of the Scorpion

Prime Winner review [Nigel Fairs]

The Doctor and Peri land in what looks like a '30s casino for aliens. But what is Peri's step-father, last seen in '80s Lanzarote, doing here?

Who are we with?: The Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown.

Where are we?: A casino far from Earth.

When are we?: For the Doctor and Peri this takes place shortly after Revelation of the Daleks, presumably before The Nightmare Fair given how the pair are still bickering.

The Good:

• Nicola Bryant is very, very good at making each character distinct. Her accents are superb (although her American accent continues to stray from coast to coast).
• The method of cheating at the casino isn't a ground-breaking idea but an interesting one all the same.

The Bad:

• The Doctor's a bit unpleasant in this story. It makes sense given that it's presumably set between Revelation of the Daleks and season 22a, but emotional abuse in the TARDIS is always a bad thing.
• The Doctor makes a very strange jump in logic in assuming that the Howard Peri saw was actually Kamelion. He's not the only shape-shifter in the universe. What a strange line of thinking for him to come to.
• The Howard mystery fails to interest and the payoff is lacking. The reference to Maxil isn't clever.

This Reminds Me...:

• "You'll need to wear something blue!" Blue is established as the colour of mourning on Necros in Revelation of the Daleks.
• We previously met Peri's step-father Howard in Planet of Fire.
• "That shouldn't have happened," the Doctor also remarked in Attack of the Cybermen.
• The Doctor has a bleeping device not unlike the one he will later use to identify Evelyn Smythe as a nexus point in The Marian Conspiracy.
• The Doctor replaces his fob watch, which was broken in Revelation of the Daleks.
• The Howard lookalike is just that - a lookalike, just as the Abbot of Amboise looked like the First Doctor (The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve), Ramon Salamander looked like the Second Doctor (The Face of Evil), Ann Talbot looked like Nyssa (Black Orchid) and Maxil looked like the Sixth Doctor (Arc of Infinity), among a number of others.

Verdict: This story lacks in a number of areas. The plot isn't hugely interesting and the mystery of what Howard is doing in the casino turns out to be... well, just a guy who looked like him. We've had lookalikes in Doctor Who a number of times before but they've always served some sort of purpose. We wondered whether the Abbot was the Doctor, Ann and Nyssa are mistaken for one another, the whole plot of The Face of Evil, but this time it's just because. The narration by Nicola Bryant is good and, as someone who really isn't a fan of Peri, her character is written tolerably whilst we get a nice gleam of the Sixth Doctor's niceness towards the end. E

Short Trips

Gardens of the Dead  |  Prime Winner  |  Washington Burns

The Twin Dilemma review [Anthony Steven]

"I am the Doctor, whether you like it or not."

After sacrificing himself to save his companion, the Doctor begins his most unstable regeneration yet, all the while trying to save the galaxy from being infested with alien eggs.

Where are we?: Jaconda, a once lush planet and home to the bird-like Jacondans, devastated by the awakening of the Gastropods.

When are we?: The year 2300, according to the script, picking up right after The Caves of Androzani and a few days before Attack of the Cybermen.

Who are the bad guys?: The slug-like Gastropods, led by Mestor, who plan to destroy Jaconda's sun using the Sylvest twins' equations in order to scatter Gastropod eggs throughout the universe.

The Doctor's Case: 

• The Doctor makes a few deductive leaps while Lieutenant Lang is unconscious, surmising from his mention of children that a kidnapping for a king's ransom had occurred, but it's nice to see the Doctor being Doctorly.
• Just as the script says, the Doctor loses all of his self-possession after Peri points out the self-destruct mechanism, making him a far more watchable Doctor.
• The model work is all pretty good, but the best effect must go to the demise of Mestor, which was achieved using foam and the empty costume. Peter Moffatt found it gruesome enough that he used as little footage of it as possible.
• Azmael's death is a good showing for the gentler side of the Sixth Doctor, even if Azmael wasn't the most interesting or loveable of characters.

The Valeyard's Case: 

• The first serial of a new Doctor, for better or worse, leaves an aftertaste for the remainder of their run, be it Spearhead from Space (which served as a fresh start for the show and was the first of an excellent series) or Time and the Rani (a pantomime which the Seventh Doctor was somehow able to recover from). No matter how much you love Colin Baker - and nobody does more than I - nobody can say that this was a great start for the Sixth Doctor. Having the Doctor suffer a traumatic regeneration isn't an inherently flawed idea, but in execution it's not done very well. Having the Doctor attack his companion and blame her whilst their both at gunpoint was perhaps too far. His few seconds of horror and confusion at what he's done are the first glimpse of something beneath the bravado, but then instead of apologising to Peri he condemns her to serve as his disciple during his time as a "weary penitent". He twice calls her a stupid girl and is exceedingly rude to both her and Hugo Lang. The greatest misfire is, of course, his costume. The coat is as Peri describes it "yuck". His trousers, waistcoat and cravat (as seen in the photo above) are entirely mismatched. The costume as a whole makes the Sixth Doctor very difficult to take seriously, especially in the darker direction that the show is steering him in. It's without a doubt the most dated of the Doctor's looks, screaming of the '80s.
• The sets are terrible in this story. The room the Sylvests are forced to work in aboard the XV773 is abysmal, with one machine seemingly covered in aluminium foil.
• The Doctor isn't the only one making a poor first impression; in their first scene, Romulus and Remus question that their mother should be deserving of their affections just because she is their mother, calling her a fool and telling their father to buzz off so they can "play equations". Was Anthony Steven trying to make them sound clever? Because they come across as being unlikeable from the off. "Abandoned again", the one sighs.
• The Doctor drooling over himself and his noble brow in his first scene does nothing to endear us to him and doesn't make us sympathetic to his breakdown in the wardrobe a mere seconds later. It's followed by a cut to Romulus and Remus and then, once we've returned, the Doctor is picking out clothes and acting as though nothing has happened. We should have seen his immediate reaction to the fit rather than quickly returning to him being obnoxious and self-absorbed.
• The Doctor's little speech upon landing on Titan III about him being a "weary penitent" and falling to his knees is embarrassing.
• The cliff-hanger from episode one comes out of nowhere - perhaps we should have been given some glimpse of Lang awakening - and is resolved in the laziest manner possible. He simply falls unconscious as quickly as he awoke. The Doctor is prepared to let this policeman die before Peri convinces him otherwise. The cliff-hanger of episode two, with Peri shocked at the Doctor's supposed death, isn't too convincing.
• Lieutenant Lang choosing to change his jacket very convenient, as he just happens to select the hideous jacket that Peri had previously chosen to hide his gun's power pack in.
• Lang keeps waving his gun about and making threats, but he isn't remotely threatening.

The Ugly: The Doctor's coat, the costume Peri changes into, Lieutenant Lang's glitzy monstrosity... Mestor and the other Gastropods aren't the best Doctor Who monsters ever seen, but the Jacondons (particularly the Chamberlain) are done pretty well.

A Good Quotation: "In my time I have been threatened by experts and I don't rate you very highly at all."

A Bad Quotation: 

• "It's the diminutive of my proper name, Perpugilliam."
• "I'm very, very anxious!" Professor Sylvest says regarding his sons' disappearance.

The Music: The jaunty tune when Peri presents her new outfit is atrocious, but generally the soundtrack isn't too bad or distracting.

Anywhere in Time and Space: In 2300 (as the script dates it), the twins play a two-player game involving moving tall pyramids across a backgammon board. They use a blank square keyboard to write their equations (which look like a glitch in an arcade game) on a screen. People are also still wearing large glasses, as modelled by the Sylvests' father. Warp drive is possible and the police use space ships. Gastropods, figures of Jacondon mythology, are somehow known to at least some Earthlings. Azmael has a Revitaliser which the Doctor was able to alter to allow a small degree of time travel.

His Constant Companion: A number of police ships are shot down. A Jacondon is executed by embolism for stealing vegetables for his starving family. Mestor is killed by the Doctor using acid.

I'll Explain Later: 

• Exactly what dilemma is this serial named for? There simply isn't one.
• Why does Mestor call Azmael "Edgeworth" in the first episode? It becomes clear later on that Mestor knows that this is an alias. 
• What can the Sylvests do that 24th century computers can't?
• Surely it would have been more sensible for the Doctor or Peri to keep Lang's power pack on their person rather than going to the trouble of hiding it and risking him finding it upon waking?
• If the Doctor uses the Revitaliser to arrive ten seconds in Peri's future, surely she and Lang should be in the TARDIS. And what does he press in the TARDIS to get him ten seconds in the past?
• Why does Lang call Azmael "Edgeworth"? He could only have heard about him from the Doctor and Peri, neither of whom know his alias. The Doctor himself later calls him by the same name without any way of him knowing of the alias.
• The science about moving the lesser planets into Jaconda's orbit making their atmospheres identical and the gravity causing some disaster is just nonsense. Why? I'll explain later.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: The Twin Dilemma is very often voted one of the worst stories in Doctor Who history. It certainly has very little to be praised and doesn't have the best story, characters or acting, but at least it's no worse than Time and the Rani. This serial does the Sixth Doctor a grave disservice, giving him an infinitesimal amount of good material in this script that does nothing to solidify Colin Baker as the Doctor that we know and love. After watching this story for the first time, I had very little hope for the Sixth Doctor. Thank God for Trial of a Time Lord and, more importantly, Big Finish for saving the unlikeable Doctor we met in The Twin Dilemma. F

Doctor Who (Season 21)

The Caves of Androzani  |  The Twin Dilemma  |  Attack of the Cybermen