Blake's 7 Series 2 - The Collection

The second season of Terry Nation's sci-fi series is now available on Blu-ray, and once again it will be of great interest to Doctor Who fans of the 1970's / 80's. 

For starters we have a host of Doctor Who guest actors making appearances across the entire season. Bruce Purchase plays an alien monarch and gives almost exactly the same performance as he gave as the Captain of Zanak, for instance, and you get to see William Squire without his Shadow mask.

Other guests include Gareth Armstrong (The Masque of Mandragora), Paul Shelley (Four to Doomsday), John Abineri (Ambassadors of Death and others), Sheila Ruskin (Keeper of Traken), John Bennett (Invasion of the Dinosaurs / Talons of Weng-Chiang) and many, many more.

The episode Gambit alone features John (K-9) Leeson, Aubrey Woods (Day of the Daleks), Paul Grist (Claws of Axos), Denis Carey (Shada / Keeper of Traken / Timelash), Sylvia Coleridge (Seeds of Doom) and Deep Roy (Mr Sin) - and it's written by Robert Holmes.

Director Morris Barry, responsible for the best two Cyberman stories ever, even pops up as a medic in the episode Killer.

Of course, this series was the one which almost had the Daleks feature as the invading aliens in the final episode, Star One, but on hearing of this plan Graham Williams decided to get them back into Doctor Who and we got Destiny of the Daleks.

As with Series 1, every episode can be enjoyed with new VFX and these are to be recommended as I was always disappointed with many of the original shots - such as an overuse of flat cut-outs, for instance.

As with the Doctor Who Collection box sets, we have a plethora of extras to enjoy, made by the same teams.

Both of the Matthew Sweet interviews have Doctor Who connections. The first is with Brian Croucher who took on the role of Travis for the second season, and who had appeared in Robots of Death.

The second interview is with designer Roger Murray-Leach, who speaks just as much about his work on Doctor Who as on Blake's 7.

There are two new biographical pieces on actors who are no longer with us. This is the series in which Gan dies, and so we have a lovely documentary about David Jackson who played him. This is hosted by Toby Hadoke, who interviews his son and widow as they look through his theatrical scrapbooks. The vast majority of Jackson's work was on stage and is therefore ephemeral, so it was nice to learn more about him.

The other biography is of Supreme Commander Servalan herself, Jacqueline Pearce. She played Chessene in The Two Doctors, and Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are amongst the contributors to this. It was a fascinating, eccentric life she lead, as you'll quickly find out.

Mat Irvine appears in a couple of featurettes on model work, and we also get some archive convention footage.

There are two wider-ranging documentaries - part two of an older one, and the second part of the new one filmed for these box sets, which looks specifically at this second year. There is a certain amount of overlap as the new doc uses excerpts from the older one, but that older one is still welcome as it includes contributions from a number of people no longer with us. The first parts of both documentaries appear on the Series 1 set.

Definitely recommended in its own right, and as a companion piece to classic Doctor Who.

Season 21 next for The Collection

It has been announced that Season 21 will be the next to be released onto Blu-ray. 

We are promised a special edition of Warriors of the Deep, re-edited and with new VFX, whilst four other stories get optional new effects - The Awakening, Frontios, Resurrection of the Daleks and The Caves of Androzani.

There are new making-of documentaries, a visit by Toby Hadoke chez Janet Fielding, and Matthew Sweet conducts interviews with her, Mark Strickson and Matthew Waterhouse.

There is another Davison, Fielding, Sutton travelogue, this time by river.

The "Behind the Sofa" segments are different this time, judging from the number contributors, suggesting story specific combinations.

The "Tales from the TARDIS" version of Earthshock is also included, as is the "Five-ish Doctors (Reboot)" piece created for the 50th Anniversary.

The set is likely to be released in April, as that is when the Sixth Doctor Escape Room, included here, is added to the official YouTube channel.

Update: just pre-ordered a copy and release date is given as 16th March 2026.

Story 308: 73 Yards

In which the TARDIS materialises on a bleak, windswept headland on the Welsh coast. It is the present day, and on leaving the ship the Doctor and Ruby spot something unusual on the ground - a pattern of string and various oddments known as a "fairy ring".

The Doctor tells Ruby of a particularly dangerous Welshman named Roger ap Gwilliam who, as Prime Minister in 2046, would bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. He declines to say any more as this is in his companion's future.

Ruby is reading some notes attached to the ring, including one referencing a "Mad Jack". The Doctor accidentally disturbs the ring, and Ruby suddenly finds herself alone on the clifftop. She is unable to get back inside the TARDIS.

On the horizon she spots a female figure who appears to be speaking and gesticulating towards her, though she is too far away to hear. As she approaches, the woman always seems to be the same distance away from her.

Deciding to go in search of the Doctor and seek shelter, she finds that the woman is following her - but always at a distance.

A hiker then appears, who acknowledges the woman. Ruby asks her to speak to the figure and find out what she wants. She then sees the hiker approach the woman - and run off as if she has seen or heard something horrifying, first staring back at Ruby.

Ruby eventually comes to a small village and goes to the inn to spend the night - despite the locals being far from welcoming. They too can see the woman, now standing in a lane near the inn. Ruby tells them that she fears that by disturbing the ring she has unleashed some supernatural power - that of "Mad Jack" - and is horrified when they agree with her. However, it quickly transpires that they are simply pulling her leg. One of the customers, Josh, goes to speak with the woman - and he too rushes away in a panic after turning to stare at Ruby.

The next day Ruby returns to London by train, and continues to see the woman along the journey. The figure follows her home. Her mother, Carla, goes to confront the woman - but suffers the same reaction as the hiker and Josh. She refuses any further contact with Ruby.

She decides to call upon UNIT for help and arranges a meeting with Kate Stewart to tell her of what has been happening. UNIT troops surround the figure and Kate approaches - and she too appears horrified by what she sees and hears. She immediately withdraws her personnel and leaves.

The years pass and Ruby has to live with the figure constantly in attendance, always the same distance away from her. She has worked this out as exactly 73 yards.

She then spots a news item about an up-coming populist politician - Roger ap Gwilliam, of the Albion Party. Recalling how the Doctor had mentioned him just before vanishing, she realises that he may be the key to what has been happening and determines to get to know more about him. Her suspicions are confirmed when he mentions in an interview that he used to have the nickname "Mad Jack", as when younger he was regarded as a jack-of-all-trades.

Ruby is able to become a volunteer on his election campaign team, and sees immediately that he has extreme right-wing views. She also learns that he sexually exploits some of the female members of his team. He wins the 2046 election by a landslide and becomes Prime Minister, and arranges a huge press event at Cardiff Stadium. Knowing of future events, Ruby has a way of stopping him. At the stadium she positions herself exactly 73 yards away from Roger, so that the woman is standing right beside him. He flees in terror, and the next day it is announced that he has resigned - his party collapsing in his absence.

Forty years later, the elderly Ruby revisits the TARDIS landing site - the mysterious woman still 73 yards away as she leaves flowers beside the abandoned Police Box.

In 2089, Ruby is in hospital nearing the end of her life. One night she is awoken by whispering and sees the woman now standing in the room. She approaches closer and as she does so Ruby dies - only to find herself back in 2024 and observing events from the viewpoint of the woman. 

The Doctor identifies the fairy ring as something to be respected and advises Ruby not to read any of the notes people have left at it.

This time they do not disturb it - and the mysterious woman vanishes from the horizon...

73 Yards was written by Russell T Davies and was first broadcast on Saturday 24th May 2024.

On being cast as the Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa already had commitments to the TV series Sex Education and so it was known that at least one of the eight new episodes would have to be "Doctor-lite" - a set-up which had been common practice ever since 2006, when a regular Christmas Special was added to the annual production schedule. These episodes allowed the companion to take centre stage so had a narrative usefulness as well as a practical side. The Doctor would appear at some point - usually just topping and tailing the instalment as they were trapped, or off somewhere else for the majority of the running time. Often the Doctor-lite episode was planned to allow for an episode which featured the lead actor prominently, and this time the companion might not feature much.

Bearing in mind that he had spent the previous episode stuck on a landmine, unable to do more than talk, there was some concern that having a Doctor-lite episode so early in his first run - one of only eight episodes - might be damaging towards getting Gatwa established. In hindsight this concern proved to be well-founded, as the Doctor would have very little input into the next episode as well, featuring only briefly until a major scene at the conclusion.

So, it is very much Millie Gibson's episode this one, and starts off as a nice bit of "folk horror". This genre has seen an upsurge of popularity in recent years after a boom in the 1970's - the "Haunted Generation as Fortean Times calls it - though it has its modern roots in the works of MR James amongst others. There is a rural setting, and generally some ancient superstition unique to a small community, with events often triggered by some incomer to the area, ignorant of local ways. A trio of movies are said to epitomise the genre - Witchfinder General, Blood on Satan's Claw, and The Wicker Man.

On TV we had The Children of the Stones and the Ghost Stories For Christmas.

Back in 1970's Doctor Who we were presented with some stereotypical renditions of regional locations - especially in stories such as The Green Death and Terror of the Zygons. 

Here, a Welshman presents us with a less than charming representation of the rural Welsh. The staff and customers of the inn are rude and sarcastic and make fun of the visiting Londoner. The locals do point out that they are not village idiots, but Ruby isn't assuming that they are - and do they have to behave in such a negative fashion?

Apart from potential damage to the Welsh tourism industry, this is also where the episode begins to go awry. Had it remained a good, spooky folk horror, it might have gone down a lot better - but instead it suddenly dog-legs into a political thriller which is more than a little derivative of Stephen King's The Dead Zone (1979). This features someone who has future knowledge that a politician will go on to cause a nuclear war and so sets out to stop them before this can come to pass. Instead of assassinating ap Gwilliam, Ruby simply sets her spectre on them by cleverly positioning herself 73 yards away from him.

There are two big Welsh actors in the episode, though by splitting the narrative in two and having each in only their half, they come across as somewhat underused - especially Sian Phillips who plays Enid Meadows, a customer of the inn who at first appears to be knowledgeable about Mad Jack and the fairy ring. This proves to be little more than a cameo for Phillips, who is probably best known for her portrayal of the Empress Livia in I, Claudius.

Having a bit more to do is Aneurin Barnard as Roger ap Gwilliam. RTD2 is clearly having a go at the rise of populist politicians on either side of the Atlantic, who exploit societal fault-lines to advance extremist, usually right-wing, policies.

Barnard had played Richard III in the TV drama The White Queen, and portrayed photographer David bailey, opposite Karen Gillan as model Jean Shrimpton in We'll Take Manhattan (2012).

Jemma Redgrave makes another appearance as Kate Stewart of UNIT, and also returning briefly are Anita Dobson as Mrs Flood, Michelle Greenidge as Carla, and Angela Wynter as Ruby's grandma Cherry.

The BBC's Amol Rajan, who currently hosts University Challenge, plays himself. interviewing ap Gwilliam for Newsnight.

Susan Twist plays the hiker, and for the first time Ruby acknowledges that she has seen this woman's face before.

Overall, it was very popular - but I would have preferred it to have either been a folk-horror story throughout, or a political thriller (preferably the former) and not attempted to smash the two genres together. Did Davies have two story idea that he simply couldn't develop into full episodes? That's how it feels.

Things you might like to know:

• Exactly what the woman says or does to terrify people is never explained, and RTD2 said he wouldn't be telling. All we know is that magic is involved as the fairy ring's disturbance is the cause of the Doctor's disappearance, and Ruby then has to live her life full circle to bring him back.
• Some prehistoric structures such as roundhouses or barrows had been thought of as fairy circles in the past, though the most common form is a natural one - a ring of fungi. The ring here appears to be inspired more by The Blair Witch Project (1999).
• We will later learn that 73 yards just happens to be the extent of a TARDIS perception filter's effects. People don't seem to notice the strange woman until Ruby points her out to them.
• Kate Stewart states that this is now an alternate timeline, one in which magic exists and more supernatural events take place. UNIT troops are said to carry both salt and silver as defences against witchcraft.
• When Ruby approaches UNIT for help, Kate states that the organisation is now actively recruiting former companions of the Doctor.
• This was the first episode of the 14th series to be recorded, and the very first scene shot was one of a 30 year old Ruby.
• At one point Ruby thinks that the "Mad Jack" mentioned in a poem on the note might be a dog. Davies later admitted that it was, but the reference was enough to trigger her memory of the warning the Doctor had given about ap Gwilliam.
• This is the fourth episode to launch directly into the narrative and dispense with opening titles / music.
• There is a Virgin New Adventures reference for fans of those books. One of the inn customers drinks a beer called Llanfer Ceiriog. This was the name of a Welsh village which appeared in the novel Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark (Andrew Hunt, 1992).
• Sian Phillips is the daughter-in-law of actor Leonard Sachs, best known as the Master of Ceremonies of music hall variety show The Good Old Days, but who also played Admiral de Coligny in The Massacre, and President Borusa in Arc of Infinity.

Update / DWM

A few odds and ends from whilst I was away before the blog gets back underway later this week.

First of all, there's been a lot of publicity regarding The War Between The Land And The Sea - and we now have episode titles: Homo Aqua, Plastic Apocalypse, The Deep, The Witch and the Waterfall and The End of the War.

For those outside the UK, I will be reviewing the episodes as they come along - so beware spoilers. I'll post the reviews on the Tuesday evening following broadcast - just so I have enough time to watch them myself.

On the night of the first two episodes, there will be a new omnibus version of The Sea Devils made available on the i-player. Unfortunately it comes from the team behind the colourisation stories, so if you have the Season 9 Blu-ray box-set then probably best ignore this and stick to the original 1970's omnibus.

The new spin-off features UNIT prominently, and this week (Thursday 4th) sees DWM publish their latest bookazine which dedicated to the organisation. Above is the cover exclusive to Panini themselves, whilst the shop-bought cover is below, though the previous quartet of bookazines had blue / white cardboard slipcases:

Lastly, if you haven't already got it then I'd recommend the latest DWM Special Edition, which is dedicated to Terry Nation and is the first of a "Doctor Who: Legends" series. There's a look at each of his TV stories, as well as his non-Doctor Who work.

I'll be taking a look at 73 Yards on Thursday, and then we cover the opening instalment of The Enemy of the World on Sunday.

Episode 185: The Ice Warriors (6)

Synopsis:

The Doctor has used a phial of ammonium sulphide to overpower Zondal. As the Ice Warrior collapses he is able to activate the firing mechanism of the sonic cannon...

He and Victoria are unable to stop the weapon striking the Ioniser base. The blast destroys part of the building and causes panic amongst the personnel.

Varga appears on a monitor in the control room, demanding surrender. Sergeant Walters urges Clent to comply, and the Leader reluctantly agrees.

Clent states that no hostile action will be taken against them. He believes he can negotiate with the aliens. Miss Garrett advises that they can use the threat of the Ioniser to strike a bargain with them. When Walters begins to panic, she shoots him with a tranquilising gun.

Meanwhile, in the spaceship, the Doctor is able to listen in to what is going on.

Varga and his men enter the control room as Walters wakes up. He raises his weapon and the Ice Warriors shoot him dead. Varga demands that the mercury isotopes which power the Ioniser be handed over to him, the Doctor having told him that the base uses these. Clent tries to argue that they don't hold these, but Varga orders the reactor be closed down so they can take what they need. 

Knowing that the base is doomed without power and heat, the Doctor decides to use the sonic cannon against the aliens. He must calibrate it carefully so that it affects the Ice Warriors but won't unduly harm the humans, reasoning that Martians will have a higher fluid level in their bodies.

Their helmets may also trap the soundwaves and affect them more.

Penley wakes up and slips out of the medical bay. He listens at the door of the control room as Miss Garrett is forced to run the Ioniser down to minimum power. He goes to the environmental controls and turns up the heat and humidity, whilst turning the oxygen level down.

As the heat and humidity rise sharply Varga suspects a trick and orders his men to kill everyone.

The Doctor fires the sonic cannon. The humans throughout the base are stunned but the Ice Warriors are badly affected.

The Doctor calls and threatens to fire again, so Varga and his men flee the base.

He then sabotages the cannon before slipping out of the spaceship with Victoria, who he sends to the safety of the TARDIS.

Zondal has recovered by the time Varga returns to find their cannon wrecked. He orders that they prepare to lift off and free themselves from the glacier before the humans can attack them.

As the base personnel recover, the Doctor and Penley urge Clent to use the Ioniser at full power, risking the potential explosion of the spaceship. Clent and Miss Garrett cannot bring themselves to take action without consulting the computer. It spins out of control and they realise that it simply cannot commit to any action which might mean its own destruction.

Crippled by doubt, Penley overrules them and takes over.

In the spaceship, Varga thinks that they have sufficient power to take off - but it is just the effects of the Ioniser heating the glacier.

As the device reaches full strength, the craft explodes - the blast registering only as a minor explosion on the base monitors.

The crisis over, the Doctor and Jamie slip away unnoticed.

Clent and Penley reconcile, each recognising their own individual strengths and talents but agreeing to work together once more.

Outside, the TARDIS dematerialises...

Next time: The Enemy of the World

Data: 

Written by Brian Hayles

Recorded: Saturday 25th November 1967 - Lime Grove Studio D

First broadcast: 5.25pm, Saturday 16th December 1967

Ratings: 7.5 million / AI 51

VFX: Bernard Wilkie & Ron Oates

Designer: Jeremy Davies

Director: Derek Martinus

Critique:

The final episode of The Ice Warriors did not contain any of the Ealing filming and was produced entirely in studio.

Malcolm Taylor, playing Walters, was not available for the first three rehearsal days and Michael Attwell, who was portraying the Ice Warrior Isbur, stood in for him.

Once again the Warriors' dialogue was pre-recorded (on the Thursday before recording).

Deborah Watling would be unavailable for the evening's studio session, and so it was decided to record her scenes during the afternoon when camera rehearsals would normally be held. The reasons for her absence are unknown. In later interviews even she was unable to recall the circumstances.

The ending of the previous instalment had been transferred to film for use as a reprise at the start of the episode. 

Wendy Gifford, playing Miss Garrett, went back to wearing the costume she had worn in the opening instalments.

The VFX team rigged the sonic cannon control panel to explode when the Doctor sabotaged it by touching two wires together. They also rigged the main control panel to explode at the conclusion.

As the television cameras were large and unwieldy, a periscope lens attachment was used to show Walters lying at the feet of the Ice Warriors. The picture was rippled to indicate the rising heat in the base, and later a series of quick jump cuts were employed to show the effects of the sonic cannon on the aliens, with the actors clutching at their heads.

For the destruction of the spaceship, Bernard Bresslaw refused to fall over in his cumbersome costume. As well as the control panel burning, smoke was pumped onto the set and the ripple effect was once again used. The camera was tilted and rotated, and the image eventually whited-out.

The TARDIS departure was a model shot, superimposed onto an arctic scene, making it appear transparent. When last seen it had been lying on its side, but was now upright.

Brian Hayles had suggested that the sound of the TARDIS dematerialisation be played as the camera panned across the faces of Clent, Penley and Miss Garrett.

One small cut was made before transmission - the end of the scene in which Varga reprimanded Zondal for allowing the prisoners to escape and destroy their main weapon. The sub-commander would be punished later but first they must take off before the melting ice flooded their ship.

Following broadcast, a short trailer for The Enemy of the World was shown, comprising the scene in which the Doctor watched a speech by Salamander.

Derek Martinus would later cite The Ice Warriors as his favourite story, mainly due to the calibre of the guest cast he had been able to secure.

One of those actors would write to the regular cast members a few weeks later to say that he was now enjoying working in "proper snow". Peter Barkworth was in Austria filming Where Eagles Dare with Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood. After recording his final Doctor Who episode, he had kept Clent's perspex cane.

Patrick Troughton confided in Watling that he was finding the schedule on Doctor Who stressful, and that he had been experiencing heart palpitations.

Film copies of The Ice Warriors were sold to Australia, Zambia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Gibraltar. The story was also purchased by New Zealand but went un-broadcast thanks to the censors.

It was still being offered abroad  in the mid-1970's but the film copies are thought to have been destroyed by 1978. The original video recordings were scheduled to be wiped in July 1969. The final episode was wiped that October.

However, in August 1988 a number of film cans were discovered at Villiers House, which had once been home to BBC Enterprises. These were labelled as containing the second, fourth, fifth and sixth episodes of The Ice Warriors. The can claiming to hold Part Two proved to contain the first instalment.

They were screened at the NFT in London in December 1988, and again in November 1991.

The Ice Warriors had proved to be a popular new monster, and the production team were conscious of the expense of the costumes - so it was only natural that thoughts turned to a follow-up story featuring them. Plans were also being made for further Cyberman adventures and even though Terry Nation was willing to allow the use of the Daleks in the series once more, there was no rush to bring them back. A repeat screening of their last outing would be their only appearance until January 1972.

The Martians themselves have impressed with their look and the distinctive vocalisation introduced by Bernard Bresslaw. The story, however, has been lacking in incident for much of its middle section - as Victor Pemberton had once noted. One of the problems has been the lack of interaction between the Doctor and the monsters for much of the running time.

Martinus is right to praise the quality of the guest cast and Troughton has some great scenes with Barkworth and Peter Sallis.

Trivia:

• The ratings end on a healthy note, though down by half a million on the previous instalment. Mid December would have seen many families out Christmas shopping or attending festive events.
• Radio Times on Thursday 14th December published a letter from schoolgirl J Kirkcaldy, regarding the background to events in this story - namely its claim of a second Ice Age. As you can see Mr Hayles gave an immediate response:

• We are actually in the middle of the fifth Ice Age at present - the Quaternary, which began some 2.5 million years ago. Within this there have been glacial (cold) and interglacial (warm) periods. The previous four Ice Ages were the Huronian, Cryogenian, Andean-Saharan and the late Paleozoic.
• One original Ice Warrior helmet from their debut story survives, recently refurbished by Mike Tucker and auctioned by the Propstore. It's one of the first batch used for the Ealing filming.

• Thursday 14th December saw Troughton appear in the Blue Peter studio, dressed and in character as the Doctor. A quarter of a million entries had been received in the "Design a Monster" competition, and today the winners were going to be shown. They were Karen Dagg's Steel Octopus, Paul Worrall's Hypnotron, and Stephen Thomson's Aqwa Man. The creatures were realised by the BBC costume department and would go on show alongside monster costumes from the series at the upcoming Daily Mail Boys and Girls Exhibition at Olympia. More on this soon.

The press covered the competition winners the following day, including a cartoon of the Hypnotron visiting an optician in the Daily Sketch.

• A young viewer wrote into Junior Points of View on 8th January that they had found the Ice Warriors frightening.
• TV Tornado comic featured Patrick Troughton on its cover in February 1968, with an Ice Warrior lurking in the background. The publication had also featured a double page spread on Doctor Who which included images of the Ice Warriors:

What's Wrong With... Time and the Rani

Time and the Rani is what Doctor Who would have looked like had JNT not had the influence of a Script Editor to keep him in check.

Andrew Cartmel is the credited Script Editor, but the story was already well advanced by the time he started and he has very much distanced himself from it. JNT had gone ahead and commissioned Pip & Jane Baker for another story, being a "safe pair of hands" (or two pairs of hands, rather) and could be trusted to get on with things whilst Cartmel got settled in. Bringing back an old enemy, played by a big US soap star, was an obvious way to get a new season launched.

We were also being given the debut of a new Doctor, someone well known to children's TV audiences.

On paper, it should have been a big success, but even the president of the biggest fan club felt compelled to go to the media slating it. What went wrong?

First of all, there's the absence of Colin Baker to participate in a satisfying regeneration scene. The Doctor appears to have simply fallen off his exercise bike after the Rani shot at the TARDIS. We see her with a relatively small gun, so how on earth did that weapon manage to target a TARDIS?

Later we'll see that she hasn't got any sort of navigation / targeting device on her Strange Matter rocket. It's the key to her entire scheme, yet it's stuck in a fixed trajectory and will miss the asteroid if it isn't launched at a precise time. Why have a gun that can target a small moving object precisely, and not a vital rocket aimed at a big hunk of rock in a supposedly stable orbit?

If the asteroid is as dense as is claimed, it ought to have drawn the rocket towards it anyway so there's no way it could miss. Also, Lakertya ought to be orbiting it, rather than the other way round.

Efforts are made to obscure McCoy's features when the Doctor is turned onto his back, but it just doesn't work.

As to the cause of the regeneration, the novelisation blames "tremendous buffeting" due to the gun.

McCoy's first couple of episodes are far from promising. He might have appeared with the National Theatre, but his acting is appalling in his first few scenes with Kate O'Mara, and the pratfalls are embarrassing.

O'Mara having to dress up and act like Bonnie Langford for two episodes is another embarrassment.

At what point did the Rani know she was going to impersonate Mel? If it was always the plan, why leave the real one lying in the TARDIS, free to get away, when she took the Doctor?

The Rani is watching Sarn run away, during which she bumps into Mel - yet a short time later she's surprised to learn that Mel is on the loose.

And at what point did she and Mel meet in order for her to know what she looked, acted and sounded like? There can only be a missing story somewhere - except Mel doesn't recognise the Rani...

The Rani's plan is to create a Time Manipulator which will alter history throughout the universe, back through time and not just henceforward. That would mean that all the genii she has collected to help her big brain with its calculations might never have been born - creating a temporal paradox.

One of the people she abducts is Einstein. Not only is this a bit of a cliché, but he was no fan of quantum physics so surely his mental input would either be disruptive as he fiercely disagreed with it, or simply useless as he would have zero talent in this field.

The Rani changes her mind about saving the Lakertyans as a slave labour force - despite the fact that the entire planet is going to be destroyed when her rocket hits the asteroid.

The Doctor gets locked in the Rani's laboratory, yet there's a second door which Mel is able to just walk through.

The Bakers always prided themselves on their research, with Pip often reminding interviewers that his brother was a scientist. But there's some very dodgy science on show here.

The Doctor uses fibre optic cables to bypass the deadly ankle bracelets as though they were electrical wires - even though they don't conduct electricity. (Pretty pointless of the Rani to employ the bracelets when she has her killer insects. All she's done is provide the Doctor with a quantity of explosives).

The Rani wants the rocket to launch at the Lakertyan solstice. A solstice is simply the date on which the sun reached either maximum or minimum declination, giving us on Earth our longest and shortest days. It should have nothing to do with the orbit of an asteroid.

Holiday - Blog Update

I'm off on holiday again at the end of the week, so there will not be any posts between Saturday 22nd and Sunday 30th November, unless there's some big breaking news. My last couple of trips saw me visit the exhibition in Peterborough but sadly that has now closed, so I may instead take a day trip to the Museum of Science Fiction in Milton Keynes, which has quite a few Doctor Who exhibits.

As I've almost got to the end of The Ice Warriors in my 'Episodes' series, I plan to finish it off later this week, rather than leave the story hanging until December. I'll also set out what I think was wrong with Time and the Rani before I go (plenty of ammunition there, so should be straightforward).

Normal service should resume Tuesday 2nd December.