M is for... Mace, Richard

The Doctor and his companions were rescued by the rogue-ish Richard Mace when they were attacked by some angry villagers. The year was 1666, and the country was being ravaged by plague - leading smaller rural communities to react violently to strangers. Mace had a pair of pistols and chased the villagers off. He was an actor, turned to highway robbery to make ends meet following the enforced closure of the theatres.

Taking the TARDIS crew to the barn where he was sleeping, the Doctor discovered spent power packs there - indicating that it had recently given shelter to someone not of the Earth.

It transpired that a small group of escaped Terileptil convicts had crash-landed in the area some time before. They had taken over the local manor house where their leader had set up a laboratory. He planned to adapt the plague to make it even more virulent and deadly, as part of a plan to take the planet for themselves. Mace found himself joining forces with the Doctor and his companions to try to stop the aliens. He had to contend with an android disguised as Death - the Grim Reaper, and was threatened with execution by the villagers. At one point he was captured and hypnotised by the Terileptil leader and made to help load carts full of plague-ridden rats.

He travelled in the TARDIS to nearby London, where the aliens had set up their new base. This was in a bakery on Pudding Lane. The building went up in flames after one of the Terileptil guns exploded, igniting the soliton gas they favoured. Mace elected to stay and help fight the rapidly expanding fire as the TARDIS crew beat a hasty retreat.

Played by: Michael Robbins. Appearances: The Visitation (1982).

• Robbins, who died in 1992, will forever be associated with his role as Stan's long-suffering brother-in-law Arthur, husband to Olive, in ITV sitcom On The Buses. This spawned three spin-off movies from Hammer Studios.
• Writer Eric Saward was not very happy with the casting. He had originally created the character as a more erudite Victorian actor in a series of BBC radio plays. This Richard Mace investigated crimes.

M is for... Mace, Colonel

Colonel Mace was the UNIT officer in command of the operation against the ATMOS factory. With Martha Jones as his medical expert, they raided the plant after a number of deaths had been recorded which involved the ATMOS device, which was built into many of the world's motor vehicles. It was designed to combat exhaust pollution, as well as providing a complimentary sat-nav system.

Martha thought that the situation might benefit from the Doctor's input and she called him in. Mace was somewhat in awe of UNIT's old scientific adviser and naturally saluted him - which annoyed the Doctor.

ATMOS's creator - teen genius Luke Rattigan - was secretly in league with the Sontarans, who were intending to use ATMOS to turn the Earth's atmosphere into a gaseous form suitable for their cloning programme.

Once he knew of the real enemy, the Doctor urged Mace not to engage with them, but he ignored this advice - leading to the deaths of many UNIT soldiers. Likewise, Mace attempted to send missiles to destroy the Sontaran spaceship - but a clone of Martha kept sabotaging this. Eventually, Mace called in the Valiant - UNIT's aerial platform - which cleared the air around the ATMOS factory. UNIT then fought back, and Mace personally shot dead Commander Skorr, second-in-command of the Sontaran forces. After the alien threat had been defeated, Mace discovered that his own Number One - Captain Marion Price - had strong feelings for him.

Played by: Rupert Holliday-Evans. Appearances: The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky (2008).

• Holliday-Evans first came to prominence as one of the Double-Take Brothers in The Harry Enfield Show.

L is for... Lytton

Lytton was a native of the moon Riftan 5, which orbited the planet Vita 15. The people of Riftan were known throughout the cosmos as mercenaries - selling their military skills to the highest bidder.

Lytton was employed by the Dalek Supreme to assist with a raid on a remote space station. The Kaled scientist Davros was being held in cryogenic suspension here. The Dalek attack failed, and Lytton insisted his more subtle approach was needed. He succeeded, after flooding the station with a toxic gas.

Lytton commanded a squad of fellow mercenaries, which included Replicants - artificial replicas of people created by the Daleks. The Daleks had a base on late 20th Century Earth, in the London dock area. Lytton and his men would don police officer disguises to visit this base.

Once Davros was freed, Lytton urged an immediate withdrawal, but the Supreme rejected this advice - intent on pleasing Davros in order that he would help them in their war against the Movellans.

The Dalek strategy proved once again to be the wrong one. Davros turned against them, and a Replicant named Stein, who had rebelled against his mental conditioning, self-destructed the station (blowing up the Dalek ship which was still docked alongside.

Lytton and two of his men had escaped down to the London dock area, where the Doctor had destroyed the remaining Daleks using Movellan gas. Lytton and his men disappeared into the city in their policeman guise.

Some time later, Lytton was under investigation by the genuine police. He was believed to be behind a number of robberies. Lytton had set up an SOS beacon, which the TARDIS picked up. 

Lytton put together a team including an explosives expert, supposedly to break into a major bank via the sewer system. His real plan was to establish contact with the Cybermen, who had a base beneath London. They were planning to change history to prevent the destruction of their original home planet of Mondas. They would then destroy their adopted homeworld of Telos, which still retained a population of Cryons, its native peoples.

The Doctor discovered that Lytton was secretly employed by the Cryons. He was to use his criminal gang to destroy the Cyberman time-ship, which they had stolen, and so prevent them from saving Mondas. This would force them to halt their plans for Telos.

Lytton was captured by the Cybermen before his gang could complete their work. He was partly converted but managed to help the Doctor defeat the Cyber-Leader and their Controller before dying.

Played by: Maurice Colbourne. Appearances: Resurrection of the Daleks (1984), Attack of the Cybermen (1985).

• The novelisations of the two stories in which he features give slightly different first names - Gustav and Gustave, despite both being written by his creator, Eric Saward.
• In Attack, the Doctor talks of his regret at misjudging Lytton, and seems to know all about him - despite the two never actually meeting at any point in Resurrection.
• Colbourne, who died in 1989 aged only 50, first came to fame in the series Gangsters, written by Philip Martin (Vengeance on Varos / Mindwarp). To the general public he was best known for yacht business drama Howard's Way.
• Amongst the other actors considered for the role of Lytton were Patrick Stewart, Paul Darrow, John Rhys-Davies, Timothy Dalton, David Warner, Anthony Valentine and Brian Blessed.
• Colbourne had previously been considered for the role of Bulic in Warriors of the Deep.

L is for... Lynda

Lynda Moss was a competitor in one of the many versions of Big Brother which were being broadcast from the Game Station, in orbit above the Earth of the year 200,100 AD. She liked to point out that her name was Lynda with a "Y", to differentiate herself from another housemate named Linda.

When the Doctor found himself transported into the BB house, he decided to break the rules in order to be evicted - reasoning that whoever had abducted him from the TARDIS could easily have killed him before now had they meant him harm.

Knowing the fate of those who were evicted in this fatal version of the show, the Doctor talked Lynda into leaving with him. She was able to tell him about the recent history of the planet, and he realised that he had caused the present parlous state of the Earth due to his destruction of the Jagrafess and the subsequent closure of the news broadcasting Satellite Five a century before.

Whilst Rose Tyler was a little jealous of Lynda, who wanted to travel with the Doctor, Captain Jack used her to demonstrate that contestants weren't being disintegrated. Instead, they were being teleported to a region of space where a vast Dalek fleet lay hidden. When they attacked, Lynda was tasked with monitoring their movements from an observation deck. The Doctor hoped that she would be safe there, but a Dalek blasted through the windows and her body was sucked out into space.

Later, Lynda was one of those whom the Doctor was reminded of when Davros taunted him about all the deaths he was responsible for.

Played by: Jo Joyner. Appearances: Bad Wolf / Parting of the Ways (2005).

• Joyner was well known for the long running role of Tanya Branning in EastEnders. Since 2018 she has played Luella Shakespeare in the daytime crime drama Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators.

L is for... Lynch, Mark

Mark Lynch was a young Cardiff estate agent who ran a secret fight club, frequented by wealthy thrill-seeking individuals. Rather than fight each other, however, Lynch was abducting the savage alien Weevil creatures off the streets and arranging fights between them and the club members. The Torchwood team had begun to notice a number of young men turning up in hospital with tell-tale Weevil wounds. There were even some fatalities. They learned of the club and Dr Owen Harper was sent in undercover to join it, posing as a bored businessman. 

Having recently fallen in love with a temporally displaced pilot named Diane, and then lost her when she elected to return to the 1950's, Owen was depressed and almost suicidal at the time. He became caught up in the club's activities - almost welcoming death. When Torchwood broke up the organisation, Lynch chose to kill himself by locking himself in a cage with a Weevil, rather than return to his old life.

Played by: Alex Hassell. Appearances: TW 1:11 Combat (2006).

• Hassell has recently featured in His Dark Materials, but most of his work has been on the stage - including playing Prince Hal in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Henry IV Parts I & II, opposite Sir Anthony Sher's Falstaff, and the title role in Henry V.

L is for... Lux, Strackman

Strackman was the grandson of Felman Lux, the man who had created the Library - a complex which covered an entire planet. Its central processing unit was monitored by a protective system on its nearby moon.

One day, an emergency message was broadcast from the planet just before all communications were cut off. A lengthy quarantine was placed on it. Strackman financed an archaeological expedition to the Library to find out what had happened all those years ago. He employed Professor River Song to lead it. The Doctor and companion Donna Noble were visiting, and he was surprised to find that River knew all about him - despite him never having met her. Strackman was unpopular with the expedition, and it became clear that he had some secret agenda. It transpired that the Library's central computer core - known as CAL - contained the downloaded mind of Felman Lux's daughter Charlotte Abigail, who had died young. Unaware of her true nature, she had all of the millions of books to entertain her over the centuries. 

Strackman wished to make sure that she was protected.

The Library had become infested by the flesh-eating microscopic Vashta Nerada. When they had struck, the Library had downloaded all its customers into its CPU, where they could live in an AI environment. The Doctor arranged a truce with the creatures whilst River gave her life to stop CAL self-destructing. She and those previously killed by the Vashta Nerada were downloaded into the CPU, to live in an AI environment with Charlotte, whilst the downloaded customers were released.

Strackman was the sole survivor of the expedition, and he arranged to transport all the rescued customers away to safety.

Played by: Steve Pemberton. Appearances: Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead (2008).

• Pemberton was the second member of the League of Gentlemen comedy team to appear in Doctor Who, after Mark Gatiss.

Class 05: Brave-ish Heart

In which April and Ram have been transported through a tear in Space / Time to the Underneath - home to the Shadow Kin. It is a volcanic world of perpetual night. 

Meanwhile, the Coal Hill district is under threat from beautiful but deadly alien flowers, which feed on blood...

Dorothea Ames, the new school principal, informs Miss Quill that she and the Governors see her as a useful ally in helping defeat alien threats. She has a way of disabling the creature which inhibits Quill from using weapons. She wants Quill to talk Charlie into using the Cabinet of Souls to eliminate the flower menace. However, she intends that Charlie use this instead to destroy the Shadow Kin and so avenge their dead peoples.

Despite the disappearance of their children through the tear, Ram's father Varun argues with April's - Huw - over the relationship which has developed between them. Matteusz and Tanya have to mediate and get them to concentrate on the real problem.

April and Ram make their way through the Underneath to find Corakinus. April has determined to kill him - the only way to separate their shared heart, despite it also meaning her own death. She finds that she can think like a Shadow Kin, and uses this psychic link to trace Corakinus to his palace.

She battles the alien king and defeats him. Her mother, Jackie, manages to forge a link with her via a Space / Time tear, and through this portal Huw pleads with her not to kill Corakinus and herself. She relents and lets him live, but orders the Shadow Kin to imprison him. By defeating him in combat, she is now their ruler and can command the army.

As people die all over the district, smothered by blood-sucking petals, Charlie decides to open the Cabinet of Souls. However, April returns with Ram, accompanied by the Shadow Kin army. She orders them to destroy the flowers and then return to the Underneath.

Charlie admits that he is unsure who he might have targeted with the device had he opened it - the flowers or the Shadow Kin.

Ames admits that the flowers had been a deliberate introduction by the Governors, in order to observe April, Quill and Charlie in action. She informs Quill that she will still proceed with helping her remove the weapon block, despite her failing to get Charlie to open the Cabinet.

Corakinus breaks the anchor linking him with April, so that she loses her power over the Shadow Kin.

She and her mother force Huw to leave - only able to return when they permit him to do so. April now possesses the power of heal Jackie's paralysis.

Brave-ish Heart was written by Patrick Ness and was first broadcast on 12th November 2016. It forms the second half of the story which began in Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart.

There are no additional guest cast members.

Reception was mixed, with most critics praising the character development, whilst others pointed out the poor sci-fi elements, which weren't properly thought out. April appears to have helped cure her mother's paralysis, but how is never explained. Nor is the manner by which the Shadow Kin eliminate the flowers. They seem to turn them into shadow en masse, which was not quite how the aliens operated before.

The tone is varied, with characters pausing mid-action for heart-to-hearts, or speechifying. The fight between Corakinus and April makes one wonder how he managed to become king in the first place.

Overall, it is a middling episode which acts mainly as a set up for the final section of the series.

It is nice to have gotten away to an alien planet for a change. We've missed that this year, with Doctor Who taking one of its increasingly frequent gap years.