MR 70: Unregenerate! (Spoilers)

My cleanup of the "overlooked" early MRs continues! After this, I think I only have one left to go, after which I'll be 100/100.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this story. It has the general feel of a disposable Doctor Who adventure, but is very well executed. Considering just how good so many early MRs are, I suppose I can see why Unregenerate! would be overlooked (and like ...ish I suspect some of that, at least, may be down to the silly title) but it's still a pretty damned good yarn.

Most of all, I think, it has this fun energy to it. Sylvester McCoy hamming it up as a loon in an asylum? That's some quintessential 7th Doctor stuff right there. The antagonists' MO of approaching random people and arranging "Faustian" bargains is a great little bit of fairy tale-style storytelling that I love, especially with the ambiguity with what happens next: are the antagonists actually doing anything to fulfill their promises, are are they only offering people the futures they already know will come to pass? I like to think it's the latter, but I love that the script proper doesn't really indicate way or another. Maybe these devils are making good on their promises; maybe it's all a trick.

Overall the antagonists' actions are a fantastic story hook and I absolutely love it.

(Random aside: would a German POW really be allowed to immigrate rather than returning home after WWII? Just like that? If so, the U.K. government in the postwar era is a lot more lenient than I'd've expected.)

Speaking of things I love, I gotta talk about the cabbie--who I don't think was ever named. He's a very personable, down-to-earth character and I love how readily he goes along with Mel for this little adventure. I also really like the fact that he's an ex-con, but is still depicted as a genuine,y good person. I was worried that detail would amount to foreshadowing for a lazy turn to villainy, but fortunately this story was better than that.

And on that note, let's talk about those antagonists: the big reveal that they were Time Lords all along was fantastic, and made what I'd initially written off as mere clumsiness in the script apparent as proper foreshadowing. Amazing when that happens, yeah? The antagonists knew the Doctor was a Time Lord, they were familiar with concepts like the "Web of Time," and had access to the Doctor's criminal record. None of these items in isolation or combined necessarily point to Gallifrey, but when they do, it becomes evident that this is a carefully and tightly-constructed narrative. Great stuff.

And, naturally, who else but the Time Lords would be up to this ridiculous mad-science nonsense? Implanting TARDIS AIs into human hosts? Utterly insane. (And also utterly familiar.) It's such a fun idea it's easy to see why the TV show would try it out several years later. And the fact that the Time Lords were doing this in the first place is some great characterization that lines up nicely with their extreme ego and eventual descent into madness with the Time War. As such Unregenerate! dovetails nicely with the stories RTD would later tell on television.

Its also just a neat idea that the Time Lords could and would set up these little enclaves of mad scientists throughout the universe, quietly mucking about with time to further their own nebulous ends.

That said, I think this story falls a bit short with its handling of the Doctor. While it's nice that Mel gets to be more active here, it comes at a price, and the Doctor's initial passivity is just... not that compelling. And given the subject matter, this feels like a perfect opportunity to delve into McCoy's darker, more sinister aspects with the Doctor... but we don't really get that. All in all it makes what could have been a genuinely great story just a bit disappointing: it's got almost all of the right ingredients for a gourmet meal, but just isn't quite cooked all the way through.


Ultimately, for me, it lands somewhere between a 3/5 and a 4/5, depending on how charitable I want to be. Great ideas, fiddle execution.