Thal Wind

It’s cald, min and grey up here, as my eighth week in lockdown begins. I self-isolated from the 17th of March when I started developing viral symptoms. Now, my asthma is a shade worse and I’m getting fat on biscuits but I’m okay otherwise.

Last week marked the first time I’ve ever had broadband in this flat. I can finally work from home more effectively and so, I thought it was time to complete this blog post I began nearly a month ago, during what I thought of as the Easter holidays.

At that time, I finished the second Big Finish box set of the ninth series of adventures for Tom Baker’s legendary Fourth Doctor.

Planet of Witches by Alan Barnes felt very long and difficult to follow. I thought of it as a mash-up of 1978’s Underworld and 1968’s The Krotons, with a touch of The Witchfinders from 2018. The bog planet with its wicker men, under the control of a megalomaniac, seemed more suited to a DWM comic strip. There was yet another pointless “K9’s been destroyed” cliffhanger and while I did laugh at how eager Romana was to be rid of Adric, I found this a tedious adventure, cliched and terribly derivative.

Quest of the Engineer is another play by 80s wunderkind, Andrew Smith, who blocked me on Twitter when I pointed out he’d contradicted himself. Ach weel- he seems to be a hidebound right-winger with the tedious military fetish of our generation. I simply point out that, while I have also been blocked by Eddie Robson (and New Zealander Scott Gray has feigned incomprehension when I tweeted about my country), I have been retweeted by Paul Cornell.

Anyway, this was another retro homage to our adolescence: “Doctor Who’s Star Wars” with a hint of Poe (Edgar, not Dameron)- eeeevil cyborg villains and planet-smashing gravity weapons. It’s redeemed by a charming performance by tv sitcom legend, George Layton and by the end of episode three I was better disposed to its derivative pulpiness. But with dialogue like “I’ll be the one asking the questions”, Smith’s style, forty years later, is still that of an earnest and clever 18 year old.

The first story in the fourth volume of First Doctor Adventures seemed like quintessential Big Finish: an unnecessary sequel to The Mutants that allows for David Bradley’s Doctor to have an encounter with the Daleks. To my huge surprise, however, Andrew Smith’s Return to Skaro makes clever use of static electricity. On a Skaro  where the Daleks are collaborating with the Thals, treachery can’t be far away, of course, which is symptomatic of Smith’s comic strip style. There is also far too much telling us what we’d see, if we could- and yet the cliffhanger ending of episode two actually depends on not being able to see weaponless Daleks. The finale is also a bit of a damp squib as we’re told the Daleks have retreated and their city destroyed. Nevertheless, the story did manage to capture Hartnell’s era and blended it with the derring-do of British comics.

Last of the Romanovs by Jonathan Barnes is a very slow and action-free look at the fate of the Tsar and his family. We don’t hear quite enough interaction with the Romanovs to care for them but it’s quite easy to visualise this story in Lime Grove monochrome. Barnes conjures an absurd image of Susan and Barbara dressed as nuns. Also, I don’t feel DW handles genuine menace and cruelty well; fantasy violence, as it were, is a different story but DW couldn’t and shouldn’t do a story about the Holocaust, for example. Although I could imagine the sentimental John Dorney attempting it.

John Albasiny of P’tang Yang Kipperbang fame, plays the chimney sweep Makarenkov very well and Dan Starkey plays the heavy, Yarovsky. The open-ended fate of Anastasia was silly, however,since the mystery was resolved, in reality, some sixteen years ago. Interestingly, Bradley’s Doctor doesn’t have any of the impishness of Hartnell- maybe that’s because the character of Vicki  allowed him to develop the more comedic aspects of Dr. Who.

In the final analysis, this instalment of the alternative history of the First Doctor was more engaging than the most recent exploits of the Fourth.

Tomorrow, we start attempting to teach the new senior phase online with Microsoft Teams. But I also hope to start posting twice weekly. I have a backlog of notes on Tigra, Ditko, Star Trek graphic novels and of course, more Big Finish box sets. 
Stay safe.