Incense and Peppermints

This week, I marked Doctor Who's forty-ninth birthday with the mammoth, four-hour Big Finish audio play UNIT Dominion. For the last few years, the company has been keen on releasing box sets - the geek tv fan's favourite format de nos jours. The audio adventures of Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor began that way; it was also the format for the release from the William Hartnell Era, the evocative enhanced reading Farewell Great Macedon.

Dominion is more reminiscent of the Jon Pertwee years, however, as a trio of scientific advisors is called upon to assist the international military force with a series of alien incursions.
 The first of these experts is Elizabeth Klein, the former Nazi scientist reformed by the Doctor and played by Tracey Childs. The second is her saviour, Sylvester's McCoy's elusive "Umbrella Man". And the third is another Doctor, a bald, flamboyant and faintly annoying incarnation who appears to have come from the Doctor's own future timeline.

Contrasted with these eccentrics who are often detached (and the commanding officers in the piece, who are often flawed and unlikeable , aside perhaps from the American colonel, Hank "the Tank") is Geordie sergeant Pete Wilson -played with warmth and vulnerability by Bradley Gardner. The other half of the emotional core of the play is Raine Creevy, played by Beth Chalmers.

Raine is the cat burglar introduced in the Season 27 Lost Stories. I would liked to have heard a cameo by Ricky Groves as her Harry Palmer-lite dad, Markus. Raine's laconic thrill-seeker is nicely counterpointed with the chilly professional Klein, who of course learns the secret of her parallel world life in the course of the story. There is also a cameo for Ace on Gallifrey with the Time Lords.

I should have seen the twist regarding Alexander MacQueen's Doctor coming a mile off. But instead, it was a well-timed reveal and one that gave a new resonance to his catchphrase "Hello, you". Shh. Spoilers!
 The bizarre Skyheads, cherubic, giant baby heads from another dimension are a memorable creation and there are some unsettling scenes with the Mind Leeches that prey on UNIT troops on the first disc. Despite its intimidating length, Dominion is an engaging widescreen adventure which firmly re-establishes both Klein and Raine as companions of the Doctor. Five out of Five Talmars!

Coincidentally, proving that you do learn something every day, I found out this week about a 1989-1990 Doctor Who comic strip. Created by John Freeman and Gerry Dolan, it starred the Seventh Doctor and Ace but was never picked up by any newspapers.

I listened to Dominion during my ten-hour  journey to Hamilton this week. I was attending a job interview in International Electromatics, er,  South Lanarkshire Council's 60s-style headquarters, round the corner from where I was born. Ironically, this was also  part of my old stamping grounds as a truant.

 
 In 1981, I used to slip out of Hamilton Grammar School; go to The Sands cafe bar in Auchingramont Road for coffee, then to Bell Book and Candle at the end of Alamada Street's parade of shops. This was the sister branch of the hippy bookshop in East Kilbride and it reeked of sandalwood incense. Being too naive then to realise it was bought to mask the odour of hash, I leafed through Moorcock and Lin Carter paperbacks while avoiding Maths or PE. And just over thirty years later, I was across the road, selling myself as a teacher!

Coming up: the countdown to Christmas and to my 200th post!  Meanwhile, it's the first anniversary of Materioptikon, where I'm looking at Marvel's Kung Fu Treasury.

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