Enlightenment (1983)

Whereas ‘Terminus’ was boring and I didn’t care about this story which was essentially a holding pattern, I found ‘Enlightenment’ to be far and away a much better story. ‘Enlightenment’ is a story that has a lot riding on it as it is the culmination of 6 weeks worth of drama. This story was granted the rare honour of being given a two disc release where sees a directors cut version which is a full movie length offering with new special effects but that wasn’t the version that I watched. I chose to stick with the good old fashioned original version. This is the first story in Doctor Who history to be written by a woman. This would be Clegg’s only contribution to Doctor Who on TV but another story would be released in the Lost Stories series for Big Finish in the form of ‘Point of Entry’ (2010) and ‘The Elite’ (2011).

This story takes place in the middle of a race by a bunch of sailing ships that wouldn’t be out of place in a ‘Pirates of the Carribean’ movie except these ships are in space which is quite a different way of pitching a story. The story has a bonkers feel to it with characters on the ships that are there purely there to win ‘Enlightenment’. The people making the decisions are all eternals whereas the sailors are actually from Earth. The Eternals can read minds and this gives them an added menace as they don’t shout, don’t become violent, just menacing. Except for one who seems to fall in love with Tegan despite not actually knowing what love is. The Eternals need the humans or ephemerals as they are called in order to exist and the ephemerals don’t seem to think that there is anything wrong with their setting.

The story moves in location to the more pirate of the ships where we are introduced to more eternals who are led by Lynda Byron. This is her first appearance on the show though her voice was used in the 1966 adventure ‘The Gunfighters’ when she sung that god awful ‘Last Chance Saloon’. In this she plays Wrack and I think that the character seemed a bit to over the top for the story. I think that Byron does make the character much more bareable than she otherwise would have been. Keith Baron who is another big name for appearing in the sitcom ‘classic’ ‘Duty Free’ does better as the leader of his ship. Striker is far more sinister but less emotive than Wrack.

If I had a problem with this story then it would be the third part which is actually gutted from the special edition more or less. It just seems like padding which is a shame because the story before and after this is rather quite good. The most important scene of this trilogy is rather well done. I’m not sure why the Guardians have birds on their heads. Valentine Dyall is the better of the two as throughtout the last three stories he has been the menacing prescene and we only see the White Guardian in this story. Cyril Luckham’s performance is rather ineffective at the beginning but when it comes to the scene where Turlough has to choose whether to accept the prize, he actually delivers the goods and his purpose in the story is warranted.

Enlightenment is actually the best story of the Guardian trilogy. Yes it suffers from bagging in episode three and the characters of Wrack and the White Guardian aren’t quite what they should be to compliment the rest of the story. It’s a fine end to the trilogy.

The Elite (2011)

2011 TOMS TARDIS AWARD WINNER

• Best Lost Story

The third series of the Lost stories returns with the Fifth Doctor. This story takes place straight after Arc of Infinity where Tegan returns after briefly leaving the show which happened during the end of one season and the beginning of another. The idea came from Barbara Clegg who had written the 1983 story ‘Enlightenment’ and the plot was taken further by John Dorney who wrote the truly brilliant ‘Solitaire’ and ‘The Rocket Men’. The story takes place on an unnamed planet where there is a battle going between the Elite and the rejects. The Elite are led by the High Priest.

Now if you cant get who the High Priest is by the end of the first scene then your just not trying very hard. At the end of the second episode, its revealed that the High Preist is actually a Dalek that had crash landed on the planet and had forced the people of this planet to build him a new unit and had deliberately started a war in order to speed up the technology because of a quite clever theory that war speeds up the urge of creating new technology. Now the idea that there is a sole Dalek in a story is nothing new and as proved in the 2005 story ‘Dalek’ its possible to make a story out of just one but in a truly brave and impressive moment. The Dalek gets killed and this starts off a civil war which is where the last third of the story draws its action from.

If I had a quibble with this story then its that Nyssa doesn’t really get a great deal to do apart from getting brainwashed and wanting to kill. This is a minor quibble in the grand scheme of things but since I am a Nyssa fan it always bugs me slightly when she isn’t in the centre of things. Sarah Sutton is always good in any story that she appears in. Peter Davison gives his best performance for sometime in this and the Doctor’s reaction to seeing the Dalek is one of the best moments in this story. Janet Fielding also gives a good performance and it feels like is comfortable with playing the mouthy Australian again. This combination without Turlough is surpringly good and is used far better than the TV version. The big name in this story is that of Ryan Sampson who appeared in the 2008 two part story ‘The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky’. In this he plays Thane who becomes one of the most important and arguably one of the best of the supporting characters. I found his character in the Sontaran story to be rather weak and in this I couldn’t tell that it was him and this meant that it wasn’t until after finishing the story that I knew who he played.

Now despite guessing the cliffhanger of episode two, I was still glad when it happened. It’s very rare for a Doctor Who story to surprise me. Partly down to the insistence of Big Finish/BBC in having the Daleks in the title. When I started listening to this story I didn’t think we would get a Dalek story in the Lost Stories series. In the September 2011 issue of Doctor Who Magazine, they preview this story and Dorney is quoted as saying people might guess what happens at the end of episode two (which I did) but if they guessed what would happen in episode three then he would be “amazed”. I have to say that I didn’t guess what happened but neither was I as impressed with it as episode two’s ending. That’s not to say that it isnt a good one but I just prefer number two.

This is one of the strongest Lost Stories for quite sometime. It’s a story that seems to be heading in one direction which looks like it is going to be great and then changes into something else that is just as great. This has to be in my top 2 of best ever Lost Stories. John Dorney has done a very good job in writing an simple yet creative adventure and is putting together a very strong run of stories. This is a good start to the Lost Stories series and I am looking forward to the next story with baited breathe.

Point of Entry (2009)

Its fair to say that I have found this Lost Stories series a bit of a mixed bag. Some have been really good (Nightmare Fair, Mission to Magnus) and then there have been some really woeful ones (The Hollows of Time) but then there are some average ones (Leviathan, Paradise 5). Point of Entry was written by Barbara Clegg but adapted for audio by Marc Platt. The moment I read that Platt was working on this then I knew that we were going to get a very complicated story and that is exactly what we got.

The story starts off with Christopher Marlowe who I had never heard of before but turns out to have existed between February 1564 and May 1593. He is writing a story but is lacking inspiration before being offered inspiration by a strange Spaniard to finish Foustus if he helps him find a knife. Whilst Asteroid Spotting the Doctor and Peri come across one that is emitting a strange sound. They soon arrive and become embroiled in the events. The main problem with this story is that there isn’t enough to stretch it to two forty-five minute episodes. Like in Leviathan we get a first episode with nothing really happening. The Doctor and Peri just potter about for forty-five minutes. Its only when we learn a bit about what was making the buzzing noises were that it started to get me interested.

The true success of this story are the characters and the actors that play them. Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are on usual good form and in particular Bryant gets something interesting to do. The part where she has to pretend to be Queen Elizabeth I but sounding more like Elizabeth II was quite funny and added a bit of comedy to the story. Gemma Wardle as Alys was perhaps my favourite because she was cheeky but not irritating which is quite a difficult thing to get right. Luis Soto was a very convincing baddie as Velez and also Sean Connolly should be praised for being very good as Iguano. All the other characters and actors were very good and were given some good dialogue.

Ultimatley Point of Entry is a story that doesn’t quite work for me. There’s too much time wasted in getting to the main nub of the story. However once they do get to what’s actually going on then it becomes a slightly more enjoyable adventure. I’m not sure how much of this confusing story is down to him and how much is down to Barbara Clegg but I think that this story could have been better than it was.