Doctor Funkenstein

November always reminds me of BBC2's The Five Faces of Doctor Who, which will be thirty-five years old next year. But today, I give you... six faces, reviewing audio plays, tv shows and comics from the last month.

Doom Coalition: this is a sequel of sorts to the highly successful Dark Eyes tetralogy. I felt that series was one of diminishing returns, to be honest and this boxset hasn't grabbed me much either. It's not that there's anything terribly bad about it; it's just not very engaging.

The spine of the story is the escape of  a Time Lord criminal with Multiple Personalty Disorder. The Eleven could be read, I suppose, as a parody of the Doctor himself and his pursuit in the series takes Number Eight from Gallifrey to Gallileo.

En route, the Doctor gains a new companion: scholarly Helen Sinclair is inspired by DW's first producer, Verity Lambert and her Sixties vim is an effective contrast to the dour Liv Chenka ( Nicola Walker). The Red Lady, a slow-burning ghost story set in the Sixties, is probably the best play in the set. I have to grumble about the soundscape however: it may be my hearing but I struggled with all the whispering and murmuring dialogue throughout the plays, on a Hallowe'en trip to Glasgow to visit a friend's book launch. And we still have absolutely no idea what the title means by the end. 3/5 Talmars

The Warehouse: Mike Tucker's story is very much in the vein of the cartoony, slapstick Season Twenty-Four of 1987 as the Seventh Doctor and Mel have an adventure which parodies Amazon. The Warehouse also takes a darker turn, satirising religious systems as the Tardis crew meet cloned workers and sentient mould. 3/5 Talmars

Criss-Cross: Miranda Raison, having previously appeared in  Sixie's The Last Adventure, has her debut adventure here as  Mrs. Constance Clarke, a leading WREN at Bletchley Park. Constance is a no-nonsense "Keep Calm and Carry On" type and her breezy authority is very refreshing. This pacy adventure, which blends spies, spivs, Nazis and invading alien waveforms, is probably the best work for BF by  Matt Fitton that I've heard to date. 5/5 Talmars

Planet of the Rani: "There's gonna be a jailbreak/ somewhere in this town". Again! The callous Time Lord chemist , portrayed again by Siobhan Redmond, escapes from her planetary prison, taking advantage of a youthful indiscretion by the Doctor. She returns to a world she has enslaved in this vivid and imaginative adventure. The environment conjured by Marc Platt is an exotic melange of mechanical insects and Indian culture. Unfortunately, the audio ends rather abruptly and unsatisfactorily but it's much more engaging than last year's dull Rani Elite. I worried about Constance for a whole episode!  4/5 Talmars

The Underwater Menace: finally, the last Sixties episode to be recovered ( to date!) is released. This Troughton dvd adventure contains, literally, my earliest memory of TV Who:

This telesnap from the archived Classic Series website is the first DW image I can remember seeing- the Tardis dematerialising as the tide comes in- from February 1967, when I was three years old!

As you probably know, it's a preposterous, hokey story set in Atlantis and the dvd is a partial restoration- parts one and four are still missing. What no one else seems to point out is the resemblance to  1965 Vincent Price flick City Under The Sea aka War Gods of the Deep!

This Jacques Torneur family action-er cashes in on Corman's Poe Cycle and features Disney stalwart David Tomlinson. But it's very similar to Menace. Lost city? Check. Criminal gang? Check. Underwater mutated slave caste? Check. Villain pinned down to face death at climax? Check. In the BBC "version", despite its many, many flaws, the Tardis crew are jolly and charming throughout.

As for the contemporary Capaldi era, I was  somewhat disappointed by the limp highwayman story, The Woman Who Lived, that trailed in the wake of the amusing Magnificent Seven parody, The Girl Who Died.  The two part Zygon Invasion/Inversion struck me as a rather ham-fisted parable about radicalisation and immigration  with rather too much sententious speechifying. However, it had an exciting cliffhanger and Clara's Zygon doppelganger was more delightfully eeevil than Martha's some years ago. I do feel the foreshadowing of Clara's fate (which looks terminal to me) has been less than subtle, however.

I was  also dismayed to learn that BBC3 has abandoned its Friday repeats of Doctor Who because the ratings have been so unfavourable. I'd argue that it's the post-Strictly time slot that is slowly strangling the series. But the unlikeable and acerbic Doctor of last season also seemed a misstep to me then and although I've really warmed to the brooding old punk this year, he's still very far from the "manic pixie dream-doctor"-  as Paul Cornell slyly labelled his predecessors.
Perhaps that's why my S2 pupils feel it's not as good as it used to be - although that's been the Who fan's cri de coeur for decades. It's in our DNA!

Looking for a positive note on which to end today, Titan Comics continues to expand their range of  DW series. They began with Doctors Ten and Eleven last year, then quickly adding Twelve and Nine. In 2016, a Fourth Doctor miniseries will appear in the spring.

 Freewheelin'

In addition, at present , McGann's Eighth Doctor has landed in "The Pictures of Josephine Day" (Hee!). Eight's Lake Poet romanticism and puppyish enthusiasm are captured very accurately by writer George Mann and happily there's a cameo for Five Faces alumni, the Krotons. Charming Time Lord fun.

Upcoming here and on the 'Optikon: Doctor Strange; Plastic Man; Metal Men; Supergirl

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