Terror Of The Vervoids: Ranking - 224

 Terror Of The Vervoids

(Season 23, Dr 6 with Mel, 1-22/11/1986, producer: John Nathan-Turner, script editor: John Nathan-Turner (uncredited), writers: Pip 'n' Jane Baker, director: Chris Clough)

'I think we should go back to our 'roots' on this series of Dr Who...Oh that's what you've included in the script eh? Great...wait, walking plants wasn't quite what I meant!'

Ranking: 224

 

 

On the day that Trump gets indicted it seems apt to have a story where a brash man with no taste in clothes is put on trial for mass genocide, although I suspect the Doctor’s arguments about false evidence and tampering from the prosecution will stand up in court better than the orange menace’s. Yes, it’s the Trial of a Timelord part three, this time the defence which has been submitted by The Doctor from his future that he hasn’t lived through yet – and no, I don’t know how that works either (I would suggest if you ever end up in court not relying on the defence ‘I’m going to do better in the future’ because I don’t think it works at all on Earth). Nor can I explain how the Doctor ends up walking off at the end of the trial with the companion he’s never met before this future scenario, Melanie Bush. Nor why the production team thought they could a) get away with that name and b) get Bonnie Langford back in her immediate post-Violet Elizabeth Bott days in to play her (she doesn’t quite play the same character and doesn’t quite scream and scream until she’s sick,  but you sense it’s c lose-run thing at times).

 Remember, beyond the central character this is a series on trial for its life, with Michael ‘Valeyard’ Grade ready to axe it at the least excuse. More than ever before, Dr Who needs to prove that it’s a proper candidate in the ratings, that it can go toe to toe with the best dramas on offer in 1986, most of all that it’s a show to be taken seriously. This is not the time to go hire that sort of an actress  - the sort of person you assume was born with neon leg warmers and a chirpy false smile - to play this sort of a companion. Then again, this is not the time to turn to a pair of writers who’s standing with the fans was dubious at best and who’s last big success was getting on for forty years ago. Or to have some of the shoddiest sets ever seen in the series. Or to have the sort of monster that would never ever work in a quadzillion years with all the budget in the world: a walking plant. Not in a JFK conspiracy sense either, I really do mean a walking plant. 

The Vervoids are easily the rudest ever seen in Dr Who (just beating Erato, the Creature from the Pit in the final), resembling male genetalia poking out of female genetalia, with a gas pipe placed in a most unfortunate position. If Dr Who ever did a porno film (wait they did, with Zygons, erm if they ever did a second one…) then the Vervoids are first in the queue. They’d definitely win the ‘playalien’ centrefold commission. They’re the sort of things that you feel are surely there as a prank, at just the time when Who ought to be taken seriously and were Pip ‘n’ Jane Baker a different pair of writers, given that the basic description is in the script, I’d assume they were there for a bet or a prank or a risqué joke - but as they’re the most ‘establishment’ writers the series ever had it’s probably a design miscommunication. They are, apparently, meant to resemble tulips which they sort of do, but you have to question just how much action anyone in the production team was getting that everyone signed off on this and let it through. It’s not just the heads, though goodness knows they’re bad enough: they’re a curious and biologically unlikely mix of maple and ivy, a race of plants that seem to buy their trousers from sports shops, are one of those rare monsters not seen since the 1960s that come with their own  evolutionary unlikely zips (and remember TV reception was murkier back then so nobody was expected to see things like that in Who’s early days – Verity Lambert would have redone the whole lot if she’d seen HD coming) and they walk with a shuffling gait that makes them the easiest of monsters to escape from, despite an attempt to hire dancers to make them more graceful (many of them Bonnie Langford’s friends, which gave her the giggles throughout the making of this story).In pure looks the Vervoids rival The Gel Guards, the Ergon, The Fish People, The Myrka, The Bandrils and The Taran Wood Beast as Dr Who’s silliest monster (though I still say The Myrka wins in a close contest). They’re still looking silly though, daft enough to make you wet your plants.

Even if you try to wipe the look of them from your head and are somehow brave enough to buy or borrow the Target novelisation (when people who glance at the front cover might get the wrong idea, especially back then when Dr Who books tended to be kept in the children’s department) The Vervoids are a stupid idea. We’ve only ever had one sentient plant in Dr Who and the Krynoids are very different to the Vervoids, a more plausible sort of weed that grew from seed-pods and took over the nutrients on Earth, accidentally causing a few infected people to turn green and fall over. There’s a sort of logic to them, that they are only doing what all life does – try to grow until someone like The Doctor comes along and prunes them. The Vervoids are test-tubes (well, Demeter seed but it’s much the same thing) babies who’ve been genetically spliced and altered into becoming ‘real’ people. They can walk, talk (after a fashion) and can even turn door-handles and start showers, growing arms with stamen-like hands to do so. Despite the fact that they’re newborns who have never learned how to use their appendages because they’ve never needed them before. Then there are the voices: we don’t know what sentient plants might sound like but I doubt few people would have guessed this array of accents: some Geordie, some Brummie, some Scouse (they could have at least have come from Chelsea, given the flower festival). They’re an evolutionary cul-de-sac all round even before scientists like Professor Lasky and her cronies start tampering with them though: they have lungs to talk yet still use photosynthesis, are allergic to Oxygen yet stay fresh without the need for drink and yet somehow create gas without consuming any liquids, while their roots seem to have evolved into what look like shoes. Alien killer plants can work but the writers just haven’t thought their world or their monsters through at all. The inspiration apparently came when the Bakers heard a documentary on how plants and animals share DNA strands, specifically the one that creates hormones (which might also explain why they turned out Who’s horniest monsters) and a discussion of whether plants can have ‘feelings’ (I asked my houseplant about it had died of boredom by being made to watch this story. Pip ‘n’ Jane can’t have been listening too hard because, erm, that’s not how it works. Every living thing has certain DNA in common with each other but a small strand causes a lot of differences and having one that can take on a humanoid shape when plants aren’t made to walk or think or live or even breathe like we do is just silly. Especially walk: The Doctor speaks at one point about how a hydroponic chamber can cause hallucinations and I thought the first time round watching this story that has to be the explanation: a mass hallucination. Because these plants don’t shuffle like the Krynoids, they actually walk, one of the silliest sights in all of Who and one, remember, that could have been vetoed at any stage without immensely affecting the story at all. ‘Vervain’, incidentally, means ‘weedy plant’ which sums them up quite well. Even I reckon I could probably escape from one of these without much difficulty and when even I can defeat a Dr Who monster that’s a sign a design is in trouble.

In any other era it might not have mattered (Whovians have long since learned to look past the low budget monsters), but remember this is the year after the hiatus, when Michael Grade had attacked Dr Who partly because he thought its monsters were ‘silly’. The fact that he considered this season and this story in particular an ‘improvement’ on previous ones goes a long way to show you why no one should ever believe a word Grade says and yet this is was utterly the wrong time to do this. The same goes for all sorts of mistakes in this show. Bonnie is actually a fine actress. Considering this is the first television she’s done since she was tiny (after years on the stage) she’s surprisingly good at times. We know from Billie Piper that sticking someone in a box and assuming them to be awful at a particular type of acting isn’t fair. Had the right character come along to test her and show what she could do, had the director taken her by the hand and talked her through how to do it (Bonnie naturally has a tendency to ‘emote’ her lines, as if delivering them to the back of an auditorium) we might yet have had a brilliant companion. That’s what Russell T davies did with Catherine Tate, ignoring everything that had made her famous and building on the parts of her ‘character’ that he liked, making Donna as feisty and funny as the characters in her show but also sweeter and warmer, filling in the gaps with real personality. Bonnie is just asked to play herself, even though that’s exactly what she was singing up to get away from. Certainly Bonnie was up for it, eager to do ‘straight’ drama to get away from her reputation (a series of cruel contraceptive adverts ran suggesting the world might have been a better place without red-headed chirpy brats being born to the world) and enough of a fan of the show to want to get involved (it helped that she shared an agent with Colin Baker). But producer John Nathan-Turner wasn’t interested in revitalising her career. In a bit of a panic over the hiatus and pleasing his BBC bosses he fell back on the only things he knew anything about, publicity. He reckoned by hiring a big name Bonnie’s fans were sure to tune in and watch, even though Bonnie wasn’t the sort of performer to have ‘those’ sorts of fans and the sort of fans she did have would not be watching Dr Who. He wasn’t interested in who her character might be (although he did write a full synopsis, most of which wasn’t used, giving her the background of being a computer programmer from peas Pottage, skills Mel will use in Russell T Davies’ comeback and a few spin-off works but never on TV). Even the synopsis describes Mel as ‘fascinating, scintillating – and irritating’. If even the producer don’t like her, what chance to the viewers have?

That’s a sign in itself of what the real trouble is: behind-the-scenes the production team are collapsing. You never ever get a producer writing a character synopsis – that’s the work of the script editor. After all he’s the one who’s going to have to live with this character across successive stories, work out their character ‘arc’ and where the stories change them and work out just what the series needs at its heart. The script editor in this era is Eric Saward and he already feels at war with JNT: he didn’t approve of casting Peter Davison, seems to have hated Colin Baker (without actually saying anything to his face) and was appalled at some of JNT’s behaviour (basically that JNT was more interested in attending conventions and big name pantomimes using Dr Who cast members than he was with stories and day to day production). Saward, though, is not the sort of person to say any of this directly: he was aware that he was a junior writer who maybe got promoted too quick and till now he’s had just enough sway over his own stories to strike an uneasy truce (it doesn’t help that JNT, notoriously thin-skinned, often fired people for disagreeing with him). By now though he’s four years into a job and watching his show get attacked for the sort of decisions his producer is making and feels he’s earned more respect. The producer reckons that a time of crisis is not the time to rock the boat. Their uneasy working relationship finally comes to a crescendo about here. Saward’s favourite writer was Robert Holmes: he stood for everything Saward wanted in the show, bite wit and imagination that pushed the series to its limits. JNT always disliked working with people who’d been on the show before and treated Homes with disdain, ridiculing ‘The Mysterious Planet’ (admittedly not one of his best). JNT’s preferred writers were Pip ‘n’ Jane: safe reliable hands who could scripts in on budget and on time. 

Luckily for Eric, the Bakers were away just when JNT might have asked them to write the season’s all important finale: after writing a Dr Who ‘Choose Your Own Adventure' they’d taken a two month holiday in Spain (maybe they thought it looked nice on ‘The Two Doctors’) and back in those pre-email or mobile phone days nobody could get in touch with them. So Holmes got the job, against JNT’s better wishes, while Saward moved on to the penultimate slots. The original plan was to have two two-part stories where ‘Vervoids’ went. One was by Sexton Blake writer Jack Trevor who’s story ‘The Second Coming’ sounds a bit like ‘The Happiness Patrol’ turned out to be. Saward began to get a bit worried about how it might turn out however, when the central image Trevor passed on was a lonely old man trapped inside a gasometer. It might have worked in another era with les riding on it, but this maybe wasn’t the year for such a big experiment. That story should have led into a piece by a new writer, David Halliwell, ‘Attack Of The Mind’. A traditional Dr Who tale of ‘beauty and the beast’ and looks being less important than character, it featured the pretty but cruel ‘Penelopes’ at war with rat-like but sweet ‘Freds’, using hallucinations to make them turn mad and look like the baddies. It’s probably a mercy we didn’t get that one – what worked well in the 1960s (it’s as theme that crops up a lot, especially ‘Galaxy 4’ and ‘The Savages’) it would have been laughed off the screen for being too simple in the 1980s. Then, at Ian Levine’s suggestion, Saward commissioned ‘Sapphire and Steel’ writer P J Hammond who came up with ‘Paradise 5’, the only one of these stories to be made as a Big Finish ‘Lost story’ (adapted for Peri rather than Mel). It’s rather good, a claustrophobic tale of another leisure centre where rather more happens more sensibly than ‘Vervoids’ but JNT, suspicious of people with more TV experience than him, stopped it going any further. Beginning to panic as deadlines loomed, Saward contacted his predecessor Christopher H Bidmead who’s always been happy to write for the show and would surely understand the limitations and deadlines. Bidmead came up with a four-part story named ‘Pinacotheca’ which sounds right down my street, a sort of cross between ‘The Space Museum’ ‘Logopolis’ and ‘Joy To the World’ about a museum where all things existed in balance and could be visited with the right key, but when one of them collapses things begin to go wrong. Bidmead, aware of the problems that had happened, worked closely with Saward, sending him regular updates and keeping him aware of all the changes but Eric didn’t like this story either, feeling it too slow and without the action he always preferred. Only he took a month umming and ahhing to reject it, distracted by the fact that Holmes’ health was failing fast and it was becoming clear that the finale was in jeopardy. JNT thought he had the perfect solution to their problems when he bumped into Pip ‘n’ Jane by chance in a lift in the BBC and pleaded with them to write a story at short notice without consulting Saward first. The script editor had found working with them on ‘Mark Of The Rani’ a miserable experience and fought against it but without any alternative got back behind his typewriter and gritted his teeth. You might well ask why Saward didn’t write a story himself given that’s what script editors traditionally tended to do on Who when stories fell through: JNT wouldn’t let him seems to be the quickest answer.

It was then, in quick succession, that Holmes died and JNT hired Bonnie Langford. Saward didn’t officially quit his job but when Starburst Magazine  (America’s equivalent to the UK’s ‘TV Zone’, but less fun and even more opinionated) called up to ask the script editor’s feelings about the new series and caught him in a low mood. Asked to defend some decisions Saward considered stupid, the script editor let fly all those pent up feelings he’d been keeping: JNT only cared about the money, he didn’t care about the scripts, his idea of talent was Drip ‘n’ Pain not Robert Holmes and Bonnie Langford and his big casting decisions for the past two Doctors and new companion were dumb (Nicola Bryant and the Davison companions seem to have spared his wrath, but everyone else was fair game). For all his faults (Saward had a point with most of his comments) JNT was a loyal soul who would do anything for a friend but handled having enemies badly and seeing the script editor he’d plucked from relative obscurity turn on him was too much to bear. JNT went into a sulk, at just the time the show needed him most, abandoning Saward’s partly re-written Holmes finale and doubling down on his decisions and hiring Pip and Jane to not only write ‘Vervoids’ (with a basic idea of a Whodunnit on a spaceship suggested by Saward) but the replacement finale too, going so far as to bring lawyers in for writer discussions so he could ‘prove’ they didn’t lift bits from Holmes’ or Saward’s ideas.

Given all the behind-the-scenes difficulties, then, it’s a wonder ‘Vervoids’ isn’t worse. Pip and Jane wrote an episode a week, dropping them off at TV centre themselves rather than entrust them to the post (as if these scripts fell through there was no time for any replacement). They had no time for re-writes and the director was at work on episode one before seeing the rest of the story. Often that shows: it’s a story that feels rushed, implausible, full of red herrings that don’t go anywhere and plotholes that should have gone somewhere. It’s also recycled heavily. Pip and Jane weren’t big on scifi and had never seen the show before ‘Mark’ but clearly they’ve been doing some research since then as this script is like a Who’s Who Of Dr Who at times: There are the ‘Krynoids’ from ‘Seeds Of Doom’ of course. There’s the setting of ‘The Leisure Hive’ (plus ‘Orphan 55’ to come) and the same ‘fake’ front of a complex intended for pleasure that ends up with people running for their life. Though there are no plants in ‘Hive’ the Argolins are similar, with ‘leaf’ type appendages that turn brown and fall off when they get too old (just as the Vervoids do when accelerated through time). The two stories even end up sharing an actor, David Allister, who was Stimson in that and Brucher in this. Then there’s the ‘Whodunnit murder mystery angle of ‘Robots Of Death’, with people in a self-contained ship who can’t escape picked off one by one (and in the future ‘Unicorn and The Wasp’ won’t be just like an Agatha Christie murder mystery, it will be a murder mystery with Agatha Christie in it). Compared to all three of these stories (though not the wretched ‘Orphan 55’) ‘Vervoids’ is a failure: The Krynoids feel like a plausible potential threat in a true scifi mould rather than some people in silly costumes that represent an evolutionary impossibility. And something’s really gone wrong when Kyrnoids are the more sensible monster! ‘The Leisure Hive’ feels like a real world and The Argolins real people, with the murderer killing through the more plausible research into aging rather than plants. ‘The Robots Of Death’, like all the best murder mysteries, makes sense when you go back and watch it again knowing who the killer is (mostly anyway). In ‘The Vervoids’ the murder mystery angle is a total washout and feels as if the Bakers changed their mind partway through without the time to go back and change things. Here’s a big spoiler who the murderer is if you want to look away now: it’s Doland, Professor Lasky’s assistant, who creates the Vervoids to make cheap slave labour and kills anyone who tries to stop him. Which makes sense of some of the details (his attempt on Mel’s life when she’s close to uncovering the truth, the ‘accidental’ infection of fellow assistant Ruth, possibly the undercover cop Hallet, not that there’s any sign in the script that Doland has been rumbled) but not all (why does Doland electrocute Commander Edwards before he’s even tested his Vervoids out yet?) It speaks volumes that the revelation in the last episode took everyone working on this story – there was even an unofficial betting scheme going on - by surprise: some suspected Brucher (who does, after all, hold up a seemingly un-hijackable ship so easily), some Professor Lasky herself (she was due to make lots of Vervoid money and why else would they hire someone of the calibre of Honor Blackman for a relative bit part?), some the stewardess Janet (named perhaps for Janet Fielding) who is the typical ‘person without apparent motive but lots of opportunity’ that always tends to do the deadly deed in these sorts of things. Some even reckoned Mel couldn’t possibly be that relentlessly chirpy for real and had to have a darker side, but nope: it’s the person everyone least suspected. Precisely because he had the least to gain and the least opportunity. As a Whodunnit, as a Who story about a new and original world, as a pure monster story with an engaging threat, ‘Terror Of The Vervoids’ is a failure on all three counts. Throw in the ridiculous of the trial setup (if The Doctor is free to have future adventures then it’s obvious he’ll be acquitted, so all tension is gone) and (spoilers) The Doctor destroying them in an act of genocide/pesticide because they’re a ‘pest’ because they would take over the rest of the universe is out of keeping both for the rest of this story and the fact The Doctor is currently on trial for his life and defending himself by sharing an event that’s supposed to put him in a good light (if he really wanted an example from his future that put him in a good light with the timelords we know now he could have chosen ‘The World Enough and Time’ ‘The End Of Time’ or ‘Hell Bent’. The Doctor’s argument? He got involved because somebody ‘asked’. So that’s alright then. Trump will probably try the same argument. Although thinking about it I suspect he’s more Slitheen than Vervoid. The final sentence seems obvious. Throw away the key!

And yet ‘Vervoids’ isn’t utterly hopeless. The speed at which they’ve been forced to write means there’s less times for re-writing and more time for first instinct and the Bakers feel like the sort of writers who get worse with each draft, not better. There are no single scenes quite as cringeworthy as the ones in their two Rani stories and without Kate O’Mara overpowering everyone else this story has more of an ensemble feel. There are moments when this story is as watchable as anything in the ‘Trial’ season (the lack of actual trial scenes interrupting the action helps – partly due to time and partly because Saward used to write those). Perhaps because of how weather-worn the plot is ‘Vervoids’ ends up feeling more like ‘proper’ Dr Who than any of the other three. The Bakers’ dialogue sounds horribly overblown and theatrical when handed to most of this cast (especially poor Bonnie, who wants so hard to get away from this sort of thing) but it works well with Colin Baker’s Doctor at his most brash and pontificating. The writers ‘get’ the sixth Doctor and how his ego-trips and desire to be the focal point in every room is really defensive bluster for how unsure he feels and with this story coming from his ‘future’ he’s mellowed a lot since we first met him, Colin Baker nailing the subtle changes in the script. He works in a Whodunnit too. The 4^th Doctor in ‘Robots Of Death’ became a suspect for being so alien and distant, an obvious likely killer arriving from the outside, but the 6^th Doctor even more so: he’s always there, in the middle of the action (in a coat not exactly made for hiding), pausing to give long speeches rather than running away. Mel brings out his paternal side too and their banter is far more believable and gentler than the bickering that poor Peri had to put up with. Colin himself feels like the only person actually enjoying himself in this story, perhaps because he’s the only person pleased to be back at work and eagerly looking forward to many more years like this (tragically, without knowing it, this is his last story as filmed – all because Michael Grade married his ex). Baker the actor belongs in this story, right on the line between adult violence and childish pantomime, and the Bakers the writers know this well, using him better than most. It helps that JNT, unofficial script editor for this story and the next one clearly enjoys his company on the page more than Saward did too, always trying to push him off to the sides. There’s an alternate parallel universe where Michael Grade got sacked from the BBC canteen for stealing the sausages and Colin was always allowed to be this Doctor from the very beginning, beating Tom’s long stint in the role because he loved it so much and no one wanted him to leave. Even Bonnie isn’t that bad half the time, with Mel proactive in a way we hadn’t seen a companion since Romana and while she’s the same hyperactive optimistic overgrown toddler she always will be, here she’s also quite ‘Rose’ like, someone who cares for and is open-minded to all the aliens she meets and loyal to the Doctor to a fault. She even gets her definitive moment as early as her first episode when she screams at just the right pitch for the musical ‘sting’ at the end of the first cliffhanger (it’s in ‘F’) and have it seem entirely in character; not many actresses could pull that off (just try imagining the director asking that of Sophie Aldred or Janet Fielding with a straight face). 

When The Doctor and Mel are together on screen ‘Vervoids’ works. It’s only when the rest of the cast turn up things go wrong. Even ignoring the Vervoids (if you can) The Mogarians are some of the most inept and undeveloped races in the series. Apparently this is their ship but they can’t breathe Oxygen. Yet The Humans (who are the interlopers) stroll around in oxygen filled rooms while they walk around with gas masks on. You only need to look at the reaction to getting people to wear masks during covid (still an ongoing pandemic, by the way) to save their own lives to know that this sort of service seems unlikely, to save the least. The characters we meet are all caricatures too: either scheming or mad or possibly both. Professor Lasky is maybe the worst of all: during the course of this story we only ever see her at the gym or reading Agatha Christie novels in a meta injoke that just doesn’t work; we never see her supposed passion for her scientific creations. While she must also be mighty fond of showering and have a whacking suitcase that’s bigger on the inside given that she is at the gym multiple times with multiple changes of clothes when this story allegedly takes place in a single day. You wonder why Honor Blackman ever took this script, given that she has no moments to shine, some awful dialogue and absolutely no character growth whatsoever. Even ‘The Avengers’, the emptiest most soul-less TV show of the 1960s, gave her more to do than this. The characters also all talk like posh middle class lecturers who want to impress everyone with their knowledge, all the time – a problem of all Pip ‘n’ Jane stories but especially here without The Rani taking most of the dialogue. For The Doctor it’s natural, at a stretch Professor Lasky too, but her more working class assistants? The stewardess? The monsters? Bonnie Langford??? Not likely. People have stopped watching Dr Who mostly because Michael Grade keeps messing around with the schedule but partly because it’s remained a bit posh and middle class in an era that was tough and gritty. Viewers just didn’t feel represented by this show any more. This story’s the poshest the series has been since the first Romana was acting like a princess at a time when this show needs to connect with people more than ever.

The other difficulty too is, it’s more Midsummer Murders than Poirot or Sherlock, a cosy one-pipe problem, without many suspects to choose from and it’s a story that makes less sense when you know who did it than it did when you were watching it unfold. The whole point of murder mysteries is to see if the audience can solve the crime, but that’s impossible – not least because the means (the Vervoids) don’t even exist when Doland first kills off-screen.  The story’s big ‘clue’, which turns out to be a red herring, is that investigator Hallet forgets to turn his Magarian translator circuit on, but there are all sorts of alternative explanations for this, from faulty equipment to a Magarian doing his best to learn the Human language. Doland’s plan also seems to involve knowing that Brucher is going to go conveniently mad and fly into a black hole as cover, even though madness is hard to predict even a thousand years into the future and it’s not the easiest or most obvious means of destroying a spaceship.  It really is extraordinarily lucky that Morgar happens to be full of the only substance that accelerates Vervoid growth, with no thought given to vionesium and how it might be harvested or where it grows beyond the fact that it exists. And if the whole of the Doctor’s trial defence is that he’s relying on how brilliant he is in the future, on how much he uses his brains to save people, well, he doesn’t really do a lot does he? He doesn’t stop the bodies piling up, he effectively works out who the killer is when there’s not many people left (and where is everybody else by the way? Of all the stories to start reducing money by not having extras a luxury cruise spaceship open to the public is not the time).

The result, then, is a story that could have been good and in a few places is (the moment Mel seems like the obvious candidate and she gets quite scared, or the moment she gets put in the composter – and not for the reasons you might think either). But ‘Vervoids’ needs pruning, a whole different monster, a better bunch of suspects, less am-dram acting and a much happier behind-the-scenes atmosphere to truly work. This series desperately needs a story to be big and bold and spectacular – and instead it gets another one full of people flailing around not sure what they’re doing (all except the star, who’s the one who gets the axe). A lot of people think this is the best of the four trial stories. I’m not sure I agree as the dialogue really is tin poor at times and the Vervoids are a disaster, but at least these are the sort of mistakes fans are used to putting up with and less obvious than the all-round clumsy feel and Sylvia Sims casting of ‘Planet’, the Valeyard tampering that wrecked ‘Mindwarp’ and the ‘making it up as we go along’ feel of ‘Ultimate Foe’. There’s a proper ending and everything, where the bad guys lose and the good guys win (not something necessarily true of any of the others, especially what happens to poor Peri and the awkward ending to the season finale) – something we sadly don’t always get in real life (edit: I can’t believe Trump not only remained free but ended up president again. In fact, I don’t believe it. Let’s hope if Dr Who comes back on the air we get a story about scifi technology by greedy billionaires being used to exploit dangerous alien political systems where Davros gets elected head of Skaro again). For that alone ‘Vervoids’ deserves credit. Just watch it with your eyes closed. And the sound down for the most part.   

POSITIVES + This is the last story Colin Baker filmed in the role of the Doctor for television (this story being broadcast before but made after ‘The Ultimate Foe’) and as with so many of his stories he’s the best thing here by miles. He’s softened his Doctor from mean bully to tetchy and twitchy and he’s always doing something highly watchable that isn’t in the script, be it striding across a room to rolling his eyes to the comedy of pretending to follow Mel’s exercise bike regime to pulling the multiple faces needed in the endlessly repetitive ‘Trial’ cliffhangers. By now the 6th Doctor feels like a seasoned traveller with all the tough edges knocked off him, a benevolent Uncle with a hatred for injustice rather than an angry young man who loves clashing with others for the sake of it in everything from arguments to that sodding coat. His Doctor works a lot better with Mel’s than the 7th Dr’s character too I think – she needs a larger than life protective soul to bounce off, not an odd mysterious eccentric playing the spoons. In other words, while BBC controller Michael Grade was arguably right that some things had to change to make the series better in this era, the star was even more arguably the part that was working, at least by the end. Thankfully the Big Finish range of 6th Doctor series finally makes good on this most maligned of Doctors, returning to this later softer side and adding multiple years, several new companions and a lot more gentleness to his character.    

NEGATIVES – Most of the mistakes in ‘Terror Of The Vervoids’ can be excused by the behind-the-scenes dramas. Wonky script? It’s not all the writer’s fault, there was a deadline. Bad ham acting? The actors had less time to learn the words. Even the music can be excused as Malcolm Clarke is officially the last composer to use the Radiophonic Workshop, in the process of being dismantled. But the one person who had the usual amount of allotted time was the set designer. The spaceship is one of the most badly made in the show’s history and sadly we see a lot of it (given that the location budget has all been handled over to Foe’). The script makes big play of this being a ‘banana boat in space, a wonderful idea that should have given lots of room for imaginative design. The space age gym consists of a solitary exercise bike. We’d never had a futuristic gym on Dr Who before and for this story 9set a thousand years after transmission) you’d think that would be a golden opportunity to come up with all sorts of exotic exciting things (especially for non-humanoid aliens) but no, this looks like the cheap sort behind some industrial complex with peeling paint. The rooms are all so badly built this is one of the three occasions when you can actually see a set wobble (it’s when The Doctor picks up an axe in episode two). If I’d paid good money for a trip like this I’d demand my money back, even before  I was at risk of being Vervoided to death.

BEST QUOTE: Travers: ‘How long have you known this woman?’ Dr: ‘Time is a comparative concept, Commodore’. Mel: ‘Not now, Doctor. Just answer the question!’

PREQUELS/SEQUELS: In a nice bit of cross-over promotion The Doctor talks about how he’d much rather be on the planet Pyro Shaka – which Pip ‘n’ Jane Baker had just written in their ‘Make Your Own Adventure’ book ‘Race Against Time’, written before their Spanish holiday and published in between the broadcast of episode two and three of ‘Vervoids’ (1986). Pip ‘n’ Jane’s ‘talents’ work better on paper than they do on TV and this is actually one of the better in the ‘choose your own ending’ series of six (though Phillip ‘Mindwarp’ Martin’ and William ‘Galaxy 4’ Emms’ are best). There’s a tribe of aliens known as the Shikari, who are based on a real African tribe with almost no differences, who live on the planet and help The Doctor in his quest to find an antidote for the latest bonkers Rani plan: covering The Earth with slime. Some would say Thames Water beat her to it…

 ‘Business Unusual’ (1997) is a 6^th Doctor ‘Past Adventures’ novel by Gary Russell that finally tells the story of how the Doctor first met Mel. It’s probably not what you think. The Tardis lands in Brighton in 1989 and a nostalgic Doctor thinks about calling on the Brigadier. Only when he goes to track him down he finds that no one has seen him for days; the last thing anybody remembers was him telling his friends and family he was going to snoop around a suspicious new company known as Senenet that have taken the video gaming industry by storm. The Doctor knows almost nothing about computer games but he’d heard good things about a certain computer programmer from Peas Pottage so goes to ask for her help, even though she doesn’t know him yet. It seems unlikely that the Brig, of all people should be on the trail of shoot-em-up games and in retrospect this early post-TV Movie story seems far more in keeping with the ‘Sarah Jane Adventures’ series than Dr Who than the series proper, well written but pitched about thirty years younger than the other books in the run without the usual sex or violence (which is a relief to be honest, though I also miss the deeper philosophy of the other releases around it). Like many a Gary Russell novel there are more continuity references than you could shake a perigosto stick at. Chief amongst them for fans are the 6^th Doctor meeting the Brig at all (the only ‘classic’ incarnation not to meet him give or take the 1^st where Nick Courtney’s other role as Bret Vyon in ‘The Dalek’s Masterplan’ shows us what it might have been like) and the ending where The Doctor invites Mel on board and she looks to a now-rescued Brigadier for help: he gives her a crash course in what’s in store for her (and includes a reference to regeneration, which is why Mel is so unfazed when it happens for real in ‘Time and The Rani’!)   

‘The Wrong Doctors’ (2017) is the Big Finish version of how The 6^th Doctor and Mel met – twice! The Doctor knows that Mel is his future companion and the one he has when he regenerates but has been putting off the inevitable for as long as possible a la ‘The End Of Time’. After losing audio companion Evelyn he’s in contemplative mood though and decides that this incarnation has had enough and to get it over with, travelling to Peas Pottage and wondering how he can explain the fact that Mel knows him in his future. Only he’s already there – a later Doctor from the ‘Trial’ era has turned up with a later Mel. There’s an interruption when an iguanodon is run over by a car (no, seriously), there’s a time portal in the nearby woods and a hungry Baryonyx dinosaur that’s got loose. Introductions are the last thing this quartet need to worry about now and there’s a confusing middle and a bonkers end that involved the Blinovitch limitation effect and the older Doctor re-creating the Mel he knew in the Tardis (so the one running around with the 7^th Doctor is really a copy!) Exhausting, but fun. 

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