Shine On, Martian Moon

Shockingly, for me at least, it's nearly thirty years since Peter Davison debuted in Doctor Who. In Scotland, a bizarre scheduling decision saw his first episode broadcast on a Monday afternoon, on the 4th of January, 1982 at 3.30. Even in the post-Hogmanay blur, that seems like an eccentric idea.
In the short, dark days before returning to work, I rewatched Castrovalva and was pleasantly surprised to find I still enjoyed it. Davison has always been somewhat disparaging about the show; at one point, he said the best thing about playing the part was getting a space in the BBC car park.  Nevertheless,despite choppy editing, dubious casting and weedy, tinny music cues, there is still something compelling about "my" Doctor's first story.

This week, I've also been listening to a couple of Doctor Who cds I got for Xmas. The first has its roots in the Weird Tales of the 1930s... I first read H.P.Lovecraft's short stories of eldritch cosmic horror in the early 80s, in a book borrowed from Strathaven Library. Appropriately enough,maybe,because the picture below could be from Arkham or Innsmouth.

The Cthulhu Mythos has been, of course, a massive influence on Cult Sci-Fi and fantasy: Robert E. Howard's writing references Lovecraftian lore but my first encounters with his Elder Gods concepts would be in the pages of this JLA giant and later in the very- low-budget film "Dunwich Horror".

The Elder Gods or Great Old Ones featured from time to time in Virgin's series of "New Adventures" Dr. Who novels, during the early 90s, most prominently in All-Consuming Fire (with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson!) and White Darkness, David McIntee's homage to the Roger Moore Bond movie Live and Let Die.
The Great Intelligence of the Yeti stories is very much in the mould of the Old Ones, especially when depicted as glutinous, psychedelic slime in the Target novelization of The Abominable Snowmen.
The current Seventh Doctor strand of Big Finish audio plays has had a very New Adventures feel, with its blend of  macho Black Ops techno-thriller and soap-operatic emoting. The final
part of the most recent trilogy Lurkers at Sunlight's Edge also pits the Tardis crew against a conspiracy to revive a slumbering alien race on a mysterious Arctic island. I was expecting some kind of twist to the Lovecraftian cliche- especially with the cutesy, parodic presence of one CP Doveday, a writer for "Shuddersome Tales"; and because Big Finish already covered this territory  three years ago in a previous Seventh Doctor play, Frozen Time.
But no. Cyclopean buildings, chanting in a pre-human language and the alien visions of neurasthenic authors crop up with wearying predictability in Marty Ross's forgettable story. (I began listening to the discs on Ne'er Day and can't remember anything at all about the opening episode). Ross apparently also worked at Glasgow Arts Centre- although before my time- so I feel I should find something positive to say: Dempsey and Makepeace's Michael Brandon  gives a likeable and appealing performance as Doveday. Er, that's it.
Great Intelligence aside, Lovecraft's gibbering, formless cosmic deities don't make very good Who baddies because his pessimism is at odds with Who's entire worldview. Aliens and monsters are defeated by human- or human-like- emotion and ingenuity in the series and its spinoffs; whereas insanity and death are the inevitable outcome in H.P.'s neurotic and doomy universe.
I was somwhat surprised to find that Philip Olivier's chirpy Scouser Hex is still travelling with the Doc; his story seemed to have reached a natural conclusion in the preceding- and superior- play A Death in the Family.  Some foreshadowing dialogue in Lurkers suggests an unhappy ending for Hex , which would be quite unnecessary, for my money.

I was also slightly disappointed by the Eighth Doctor play The Resurrection of Mars. Since I was listening to it after Relative Dimensions, I already knew Sheridan Smith's Lucie Miller was back on board. This time last year, I wrote a blog about Lucie's affecting departure in Death In Blackpool; but just as with Rose Tyler, that impact has been significantly diminished .

Secondly, the villains win! All the likeable human characters who were introduced in Deimos die, which hardly shows the Doctor in a very heroic light. As I've said before on Myspace, the hissing Ice Warriors become quite monotonous to listen to, for an entire story. At least there's an explanation (of sorts) of why Niky Wardley's character Tamsin Drew wasn't really engaging as The Companion, since she flounces off with renegade Time Lord, the Meddling Monk; in the person of Graeme Garden, this regeneration is much more malign than the bumbling Sixties original, Peter Butterworth.

Lastly, the drama hinges on the contention that the Doctor can't save certain lives for fear of damage to the Web of Time. Not only have we seen him do exactly that in the parent series (The Fires of Pompeii, The Waters of Mars), it formed the crux of the entire Charley Pollard arc for Big Finish from 2001-02! I'm assuming that such a significant oversight is a plot point that will be addressed in the final play of this season, ominously titled To The Death. There's also a sequence of dialogue from the Eighth Doctor that explains that he gave up his manipulative "chess-playing" Seventh persona because someone died as a result, which might point again to Hex's future (or lack of one).
While Lucie is, for me, one of the most effective audio companions, combining Rose's empathy with Donna's irreverence, I almost wish Tamsin had been replaced by the wonderfully-named Temperance Finch, Twitter's own Tracy-Ann Oberman. 
Next week, I'm returning to the Monk's final appearance in the Sixties in the second half of the Daleks' Master Plan audiobook, The Mutation of Time. More of the Outer Space Robot People in the next installment...