60+ Years of Doctor Who Anniversary Marathon

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now. The Mind Runners and The Demon Rises are not two separate stories connected by a story arc. They are the same story!

I don’t know why Big Finish tries to sell them separately (other then to gouge more money out of customers), but they are clearly a four part story that’s been split into two for no good reason, and that makes me mad!

It’s dishonest.

I might have grumbled a bit at shelling out $22 for one story, but it would have been less offensive then selling half a story for $11, under the pretense of it being a single story in a larger story arc, and basically forcing me to pay the other $11 if I want to get the conclusion. All in the hopes I’ll buy the entire season at a minimal discount; even though I don’t want extra stories, I just want the one!

It’s a poor business model that turns me right off the entire range, no matter how good the stories therein may be.

But then how good was this story?

Pretty dang good, actually.

One of the reasons why the Fourth Doctor is my least favorite Doctor is because he’s too much of a jackass in the show. An aloof brat who thinks he’s always right, and tries to pass off his unemphatic air as being ‘alien’. I’m sorry, but his Bugs Bunny in space routine does nothing for me, and his dead eyed stare leaves me cold. Not helped by the fact that he’s one of the few Doctors without a character arc of any sort.

In short, while I think the Fourth Doctor has interesting stories, I personally find the Fourth Doctor himself to be a very uninteresting character the majority of the time. 

But not here.

This story fixes that. By basically being written like a New Who episode. This is the Tenth Doctor being played by Tom Baker essentially; not the Fourth Doctor of the original series.

He’s kinder. He’s more considerate. He still has an ego, but can be humbled here. He isn’t just ordering people about, but providing explanations and encouraging people. He asks permission and says ‘I’m sorry’. He actually seems to give a crap about people dying, for once!

No this isn’t the Fourth Doctor at all, and that’s why I love it.

But there’s other things to recommend here as well. Both K-9 and Leela are utilized well. The story has good pacing, with plenty of plot twists that just keep piling on, until the wild climax. And it introduces an interesting new villain in Mr. Shift. A very comic book type character who has the potential to become a reoccurring foe.

If there’s anything to criticize here, besides how its sold, is the fact that there’s arguably too many sci-fi concepts and not enough breathing room for all of them. We got inception style mind invasions, a cult of cyborgs, a mad scientist with polymorphic superpowers, a dying futuristic city running out of resources, a rocket made from human flesh, and a living planet that consumes people. That’s a lot, and not all of it comes together neatly.

Still, it’s at least interesting. You’ll never get bored of the tropes since nothing outstays its welcome. So if you don’t mind paying twice, this might be something worth checking out if you’re a Who fan.

This might be the weakest of the comics so far. It’s not really bad per-say, it’s just also not good.

The Tardis gets caught in a meteorite shower and the Doctor has to make an emergency landing to repair the damage. No sooner does he land and starts to fix a broken part, then does a young man come running up to him, thinking the Tardis is a real police box, calling for help.

All the lights went out in the nearby lounge as soon as the Tardis landed, but the weirder thing is that everyone inside is frozen like statues. Soon objects begin floating around and attacking the Doctor and his new friend.

Naturally the young man assumes it might be ghosts, but the Doctor insists that there’s scientific explanation. And there is... sort of.

One of the meteorites landed on the house and it’s absorbing and radiating energy; somehow freezing the guests and causing objects to come to life using their energy. That’s not how radiation works, but sure.

The Doctor then uses the broken part in his hand to neutralize the meteor. The end.

I like the general concept of the story. A short play on classic horror movie tropes, a-la Scooby Doo, but instead of a man in a mask or an alien causing havoc, it’s just a freak accident of nature.

The problem stems from the fact that it’s only two parts. There’s not enough room for the story to breathe and for the spooky atmosphere they’re going for to set in.

It also doesn’t help that the page layout is often confusing and the backgrounds too simplistic to really drive home what is happening. It’s not bad art, but it is a downgrade from the third and second doctors comics we’ve covered.

I think this is one story that actually would read better had it been printed in color.

I’ll give the story this much; it’s perhaps the most consistent novel I’ve read so far for the marathon.

The mains are perfectly in character. The pacing is sharp. The prose has some wit to it. The plot is serviceable, and the new characters are at least interesting even when being purposely unpleasant.

While I don’t suspect The Romance of Crime to ever go down in history as like a masterpiece or anything, it is a well written book.

A shame I don’t find it particularly interesting.

I don’t mean that I think the story is boring. Far from it. It held my attention well.

What I mean is, I’m just not particularly invested in any of the characters.

This is purely a personal taste thing, but The Fourth Doctor and Romana II are perhaps my least favorite Tardis team. They’re well portrayed, and if you do like them, then I’m sure this story will be a joy for you to read, but for me it was basically a chore. Only K-9 saved me.

The rest of the book only characters are colorful and stand out for sure, but none of them are particularly endearing either. It’s more or less a cast of brats trying to out do one another in what’s essentially a black comedy.

In fact the entire tone of the tale reminds me more of the Sixth Doctor’s season 22 rather than the over the top silliness of season 17 that the story is trying to evoke. 

This is in large part because, like most Virgin novels, the story tries to be edgier than it’s tv counterpart. There’s quite a bit of gore and some creepy advances towards Romana by one of the characters. Also the main villain is a survivor of genocide, and there’s a flash back to her village being gunned down. Lovely.

The story has way too many dark moments like this to really come across as an extension of the show, and it takes itself too seriously to really be the absurdist style comedy that Douglas Adams favored during that time. But taken as a one off dark comedy, the humor and horror blend together nicely.

That’s why I call it consistent. It doesn’t swing too far in either direction. The humor is subtle, even with the Ogrons stumbling about, and the more mature moments are so fleeting and toned down, that you could see them making it to the screen with some clever editing and cut-a-ways. 

So all in all, I’ll this a typical Fourth Doctor adventure. A perfectly fine story with interesting concepts, but very little heart to it.

Well that was depressing.

And I suppose that’s the story’s intention, to be depressing and disturbing, but damn.

Glass tells the story of a woman who’s life is ruined after an alien encounter; narrated from her point of view, no less.

She keeps seeing a floating face reflected back at her that no one else can see. She starts having panic attacks, quits her job, avoids her family, and basically develops agoraphobia to such an extreme that she won’t even leave her room; not even to shower, for fear of seeing the face again.

And to make things even more unpleasant, during all of this she’s sexually assaulted by a co-worker. Who then violently beats her, threatens her if she tells anyone, and just leaves her on the side of the road. And literally nothing comes of it! It’s barely a foot note in her tortured mind.

I don’t know if the author was going for an allegory for mental illness, but it sure reads like one. Where victims are more vulnerable to abuse and the irony of being too embarrassed and afraid of being even perceived as crazy, only makes the illness worse as you refuse help.

And sure, the Doctor and Romana turn up to get rid of the face, and explain that it was really an inter-dimensional being using her mind to manifest in this world. But none that really fixes things. I’m mean it helps her to finally get out of the house and seek medical treatment, which is good, but she’s still left with all of the problems.

She’s now out of work, on benefits, her marriage is on the verge of collapse, and most tragic if all, she still can’t bring herself to look at her own child because the alien copied his face. The thing she loves the most in the world is also a trigger for her trauma.

And there the story just ends. There no real closure. You see where things are on the track to get better, and they might, you can also see the deeper issues aren’t going to heal fast and may even relapse or get worst. We don’t what will happen in the future, whether things will mend or come undone, and neither does the protagonist.

And I suppose in that way, the story is brilliant. I very effective piece of sic-fi highlighting the ills of society and humanity. It’s also really dang depressing.

Much like with Merry Christmas Doctor Who, these short advertisements could have gone into the minisode category as well as they're basically filmed skits. But as the Doctor Who property so rarely is used to advertise anything but itself and the BBC I figure I would cover these here.

In both 1979 and 1980 Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were commissioned to film a series of ads for Prime computers that were then only broadcasted in Australia. Reportedly Tom Baker was unhappy with the scripts they had received and re-wrote all of them himself. 

What follows is four very comedic skits that all kind of lead into each other creating a sort of mini series, even though the first two are clearly shown out of order on the DVD and one could argue the same of the second two. 

What should clearly be the first short involves the Fourth Doctor walking into the Tardis to discover that Romana has redecorated the control room and added a new Prime computer to the system. Apparently in the DW universe Prime computers lasted far into the future and are now the standard on Gallifrey. Why an Earth based computer company? Who knows. Don't think about it too hard. 

In the second short the universe is about to explode and Romana and the Doctor have to make a bunch of calculations using the computer to stop it. Why is the universe about to explode? Who knows. Don't think about it too hard.

In the next couple of shorts Romana and Four are out of their season 17 garb and in their S18 threads instead. Beyond that indicator of the passage of time the next two shorts follow after the other two, and could potentially be viewed in any order.

Personally I go in the opposite order shown on the DVD once again. Viewed that way, then the next short has Romana kidnapped by unseen aliens who demand to know what computer the Doctor is using under threat of Romana's life. Turns out they just want to buy one. This is the funniest of the shorts and it's purely because you get to hear the doctor cuss. lol

Then the last short has Romana fawning over an oblivious Doctor and has the computer trick him into to proposing to her. Which just feels really, really out of character for the very independent Romana. I know it's a meta joke about the actors real life love affair, but I think the humor kind of falls flat and is the weakest of the four skits. I can only assume she's just super grateful for being rescued in the last short, I guess. But why does that one rescue count more than any of the past times he's saved her? Who knows. Don't think about it too hard.

So that's it basically. They're all pretty average comedy skits with humor that was already feeling dated by the late 70s and really choppy editing that could only be a product of the early 80s. There's also just something slightly off about them because they were rewritten in haste and without any editing by the actors themselves. But the actors carry the whole thing with pure charm and it has the feel of an episode of What's My Line but with a Who theme. 

The video editing community on Youtube is near and dear to my heart. I started way back in college with Non/Disney crossover videos, and while I’ve since moved on to other pursuits, I still like to go back and watch old videos or go tracking down old internet friends to see what they’re up to.

Basically, what I’m getting at, is that this is one area of fandom that I love a lot, and I had a real nice time exploring the Classic Who video community and finding new stuff to enjoy. Especially as I can’t help but feel that this era of Who is under represented compared to the revival series.

Therefore, given the short nature of the media, rather than talk about one particular video, I compiled a playlist of Fourth Doctor themed videos that stood out to me.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLclHBNP5fz2C1TuvbZU18OyDKvNYOImal

I tried to get a variety of styles and themes; from character tributes to angsty ship videos, from simple edits to flashy effect-fests, and a slew of various music. I also restrained myself and prevented my Sarah Jane bias from over taking the entire playlist, so you’re welcome.

Thank you. Any feedback is very much appreciated. 

Favorite Story: K-9: "The Cambridge Spy" - It's just a really cute show. It reminds me of things like Power Rangers and Shining Time Station that I use to watch as a kid. Therefore it manages to be nostalgic even though I was an adult when it was made.

Least Favorite Story: Lost in Time - It's just a bad game. Like there's nothing else to say about it. It's a really bad game that hinges on the idea that you would rather pay money to not play it then to actually just play it.

1. K-9: "The Cambridge Spy" - Spin-Off
2. Fourth Doctor FMV Playlist - Fan Work
3. A Shard of Ice - Short Audio
4. Disney Time - Miscellaneous
5. The Mind Runners/The Demon Rises - Full Audio
6. The Leisure Hive - TV Story
7. Glass - Short Story
8. Merry Christmas Doctor Who - Minisode

9. Prime Computer Adverts - Behind the Scenes

10. The Romance of Crime - Novel
11. The Talons of Weng-Chiang - Novelization
12. The Eerie Manor - Comic
13. Lost in Time - Video Game

Moving on, we've come to the Fifth Doctor portion of the marathon.