The Rings of Ikiria (2012)

It’s been a few years since we last had a Mike Yates story. In fact it was back in 2009 when we were treated to the enjoyable story ‘The Magicians Oath’. The story is the final one of the sixth season and it’s also the second to be written by Richard Dinnick in the space of a couple of months (not that I’m complaining – it’s just a fact). The story sees Mike encounter Ikiria who seems to have turned everyone into mindless zombies with the Ikiria having not the most honourable of intentions.

The story starts off which quite a sad state of Mike’s affairs. He’s living in quite an empty apartment which is the opposite of how I imagined he would have lived (I’m thinking there would be Jo Grant shrine).  It’s always interesting how Mike Yates is portrayed in these stories because as we all know he turns on the Doctor and so its fun to try and think of Yates as a good person even though due to Richard Franklin’s performance we can imagine that. However despite the grim introduction there isn’t time to wallow in this depressing revelation before the story main story gets going. Now before the theme tune starts we get a bit of the action which appears to indicate that Mike is shot by the Brigadier. This is quite a big thing and it’s the bait that’s on the hook which reeled me through this story. It’s clear that Mike doesn’t get killed because we know the future so the writer distracts us to a certain extent by drawing our attention to the alien threat of this story. The wonderfully named Ikiria. The Ikiria is giving out rings like their sweets which seem to brainwash the person who is wearing it and this soon turns the story into Mike vs. everyone else and that includes UNIT. The Brigadier is one of those people and at the point we get to in the story where the Brig shoots Mike we find out something that I didn’t see coming. The Brig was pretending to be possessed by the Ikiria and had deliberately missed Mike when he shot him. The second half was really entertaining and I was impressed with how it all came together.

Richard Franklin has a wonderful voice which is used to maximum effect in this story. His style of telling the story is very gentle and always seems to have the same warm tone to it. I wish we could have more Mike Yates stories or just more stories with Richard Franklin in it because I genuinely believe one of the reasons I like this story so much is because of Franklin. Felicity Duncan plays Ikiria and I thought that this was an effective character. Ikiria doesn’t go over board and isn’t pushed into the spotlight of the story but does enough to come across as an effective and believable threat which I found to be quite good thing.

Out of the two Dinnick stories we have had I am really hard pressed to say which one I enjoyed the most because they both have good qualities. This had a good story and The Wanderer had William Russell but on reflection I would have to say that I enjoyed this just that little bit more. The story has a feel of being a UNIT story with there been the idea that there are people who can’t be trusted and feeling like being an outsider. I think that the Rings of Ikiria is a nice way to end the sixth season of the companion chronicles, I would also go so far to say that it’s the strongest third Doctor story that we have had for some time.

Rating – 8/10