The Guardians of Prophecy (2012)

The Lost Stories return after a brief break and it’s the return of the Sixth Doctor Lost Stories. The story sees the return of the Melkur who previously appeared in the 1981 adventure ‘The Keeper of Traken’ where the Master was using the Melkur as a TARDIS. In this story the Doctor and Peri arrive on Serenity which is one of the few places not wiped out in Logopolis. The story sees the rise of Malador who has been in stasus for a very long time. The plot is relatively straight forward which I was relieved at because at the moment all I want is for there to be simple or near straight-forward adventures and Johnny Byrne and Jonathan Morris have managed to accomplish this. It did seem to get a bit confusing towards the end but it kept hold of itself enough for me to still follow what was going on.

Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are a good double act and it’s a shame they don’t do more stories together. You can pretty much guarantee that both will manage to get the best out of the Yellow Pages and so as this story has a good plot they have trouble getting a handle on this story. I found Baker’s performance to be on the usual level that we expect from him. Nicola Bryant did a good job and was good in her part of the plot strand. It’s good how out of all the companions from the classic era, Bryant is the one who’s voice hasn’t really changed over the years (Sarah Sutton being the exception). Graham Cole is for me an interesting piece of casting as he had previously appeared in Doctor Who as a Cyberman and also quite ironically as Melkur in Keeper. I think that he had a good voice for radio and the character of Ebbko was quite a fun one and was possibly a nice bit of lightness in what at times was very serious. Another piece of good casting was that of Simon Williams as Guardian. Williams (soon to be in Counter Measures) was the best of the guest stars, I liked how the character just sounded so good. Stephen Thorne as Malador is always enjoyable and in this Thorne gave the character of Malador something that made the character one of the best baddies that we have had in these lost stories since perhaps the Celestial Toymaker.

The casting was good and large chunks of this story was very good. How good would it have been on TV? I think it would have worked well on TV even in by 1980’s standards. My enthusiasm for the Lost Stories has wained over the last few releases as the major Lost Stories have now been made and anything else is something that existed probably on a single A4 piece of paper. It’s not the best Lost Story that there has been but it is certainly better than other Sixth Doctor Lost Stories such as Hollows of Time and Point of Entry.