DWM Preview! The End of the Road

It seems as if the Doctor and Peri have finally reached their destination at The End of the Road, the four episode season finale to the longest and most action packed year of Doctor Who ever. From Earth to Telos to Varos to Hexagora to Celleste to Savini Minor to Pentacasta, facing Cybermen, Hexagorans, cannibals, zombies, space whalers, Movellans, mythological beasts not to mention the Rani and the Master, the Doctor and Peri have had the trip of a lifetime and survived it as well. But, like all good things, this too must come to an end.

So, what happened to Lytton? Last seen marooned on the barren rock of his home planet, his one goal in life robbed from him, he has obviously survived - but at what cost? Has this ultimate twist of fate robbed him of his sanity - or might we see a more virtuous Lytton, less willing to kill as he finally realizes that he who lives by the sword dies by the sword. And just what sort of universe is he now trapped in? Warhead of the Daleks, Veangeance on Varos, Bid Time Return, Twilight of the Living, The Legacy of the Borad and The Song of the Space-Whale (all to some extent set in his home time) showed a disenfranchised cosmos of corruption, decay and mass famine following an outbreak of mysterious plagues and viruses only held in check by the work of the mysterious 'Healer' of Nekros?

Ah, Nekros, another name that has been haunting the Doctor. Not only is it the base of the unknown benefactor, whose intervention saved the Ghaleen, it is also a place the Doctor has been before and, it seems, is destined to return to. In The Enemy Within, the Doctor mused that if the Master stole his body it would be the evil renegade that had to face Nekros, and its appearance in In The Hollows of Time left our hero uncharacteristically lost for words. But what does it all mean?

One thing is certain - Nekros is not the ideal spot for a holiday. A frozen ice world, Nekros is known as the Planet of the Deceased, boasting a galactic funeral home within walking distance of a protein refinery plant, one being run by a failed movie star and the other boasting a deranged radio DJ transmitting 1960s rock and roll to an audience of the dead. Just why have these industries been created on such an inhospitable planet? Why has no one ever seen the Great Healer? How does Lytton know the recluse's true identity? Why are the authorities allowing people to attempt to steal the dead bodies from Tranquil Repose? And why is the Doctor determined to part company with Peri?

The End of the Road will contain not only the answers but some truly shocking revelations as the Doctor and Peri face their ultimate adventure, a winner directed by the capable hands of Graeme Harper who also directed The Enemy Within and The Caves of Androzani. Roger Limb provides the music for The End of the Road, as he did in The Keeper of Traken and Black Orchid.

The cast includes Maurice Colbourn making his fourth appearance as Gustave Lytton, Roy Tromley as the Great Healer, William Gaunt as Vargos, Robbie Coltrane as Takis, Ray Brooks as Lilt, Anna Carteret as Kara, Clive Swift as Jobel, Nerys Hughs (last seen in 1982's Kinda) as Tasambeker and another Young One in the rotund shape of Alexei Sayle as the DJ to the Dead.

The final story of the twenty-second season of television's longest running science fiction program, the first full season of the sixth actor to play the Doctor, is going to make 'Tranquil Repose' totally redundant.

PRELUDE

Detective is flat
No longer
Is always flat out
Got the number of the getaway car
Didn't get very far...

Jerzei was going for a stroll. He’d thought it best to end his first day on The Planet of the Deceased with a walk around the graveyard. And that’s what it was – a high-class graveyard for all the sad rich people who’d caught such sophisticated plagues and diseases they hadn’t lasted long enough to be put into suspended animation like the paying clientele of Tranquil Repose. Of course, Tranquil Repose had the edge of no disappointed customers being able to complain, or even ask for their money back. Despite all the work of the Healer, (or Great Healer as the Chief Embalmer continually insisted), you still couldn’t take it with you.

The large man in his brightly-coloured Hawaiian shirt wandered aimlessly through the tall, bone-white memorials placed against the black marble pavement. The sky above was still a brilliant cobalt blue laced with candy floss clouds, and all the trees were cloaked with verdant green leaves... despite the fact not a single one of them was still able to provide any food or nutrition.

Jerzei kicked at a fresh weed plant worming its way between the base of the monument at the head of the pond, its purple bells as out of place as his entire wardrobe. It was then Jerzei stopped dead as he saw something totally unexpected. The chunky portable tape player, specially customized by his grandfather, continued to play the cartridge as he stared.

It’s lucid as hell
And these images
Moving so fast
Like a fever
So close to the bone
I don't feel too well

It was a box. A wooden box large enough for a person, or maybe two, to stand inside. Its pyramidal roof was topped by a grubby, unlit metal lantern, but there was light behind the eight off-white windows that lined the upper walls. Was it some new memorial to be added to the Garden of Fond Memories? Had someone just decided that the usual ivory domino-shape was passe – as well as being impossible to appreciate during the Long Cold?

As Jerzei approached it, he realized he was not alone. Standing at the far end of the pond, staring into the still, dark water, was an old man with long white hair, dressed in a black jacket and checked yellow trousers. He was leaning on an elaborately carved cane, but seemed to be doing it out of bad temper than weakness.

Jerzei plucked the earphones from his ears flipped down the volume. “Ey, canna help ya?” he asked in his normal tones, immediately wishing he’d put on a more formal tone.

“I doubt it, young man. Yes. I doubt it,” the newcomer sighed, eyes still locked at the water.

Maybe he was ill? “You all right?” Jerzei asked, reigning in his accent slightly.

The old man tore his gaze from the water and gave a weak, sad smile to the larger man. He did not seem to notice the garish clothes, the thinning hair or the double chins. “Some days, my friend, are better than others. And today has not been a good day. No. I should say not.”

Jerzei awkwardly shuffled in the old man’s direction. “D’you wanna talk about it?” he offered, half dreading a positive reply.

The old man sighed. “Not particularly... my young friend... no. Yes, I’m quite, quite consent to stay here in silence. Some friends of mine died very recently. In front of me. I wanted to get away from it all, and where does my aimless TARDIS take me? A graveyard!”

“It’s the Garden of Fond Memories,” Jerzei offered, more to break the silence.

“Yes, an apt title. My memories of them are not fond. You see, my memories are of them dying, of how I should have helped them... but I didn’t. And now they’re dead. And poor Steven... it’s hit him hard. And I cannot console him.”

“Time wounds all heals,” Jerzei said in his best American drawl.

“Quite, quite,” the old man nodded, then frowned and looked at Jerzei suspicious. “Eh?”

“Things’ll get better,” the large man said quickly, with a confidence he didn’t feel.

The old man was staring at the monument at the other end of the pond, the very first statue erected in the garden. It showed the head and shoulders of a man with curling hair, large eyes and full lips, with a dotted cravat and patterned jacket.

“You don’t say,” the old man said, studying the other face. “Momento mori,” he tutted. “The one fate we all share. The one we can only hope to delay, never escape. Sara and poor Katarina... I... I wonder how long before it is my turn.” With another sigh, the old man nodded to Jerzei and made his casual, dignified and above all lonely way back to the blue wooden box.

“Thing will look better in the morning,” Jerzei called after him.

“Hmm. But which morning, hmm? And where? Have you thought of that?” the old man tutted. “But you’re right. A change is needed... Perhaps in more ways than one. Goodbye, young man.”

“Hey, just call me the DJ,” Jerzei offered in his on-air voice.

The old man blinked, but his smile remained – still seemingly genuine. “DJ. Yes, quite so. I am the Doctor. It was good to meet you but, er, I must be off. Goodbye.”

The old man returned to the blue box and studied it for a moment.

“’Doctor’, eh?” Jerzei echoed.

Jerzei cranked up the volume and looked at the statue again. He didn’t hear any wheezing or groaning, but a faint flash of blue made him glance over his shoulder and see the blue box had vanished in the mysterious manner it had arrived.

Sleeping alone
For pleasure
The pineapple head
It spins and it spins
Like a number I hold

Jerzei looked back at the two words expertly carved into the base of the ivory rectangle.

THE DOCTOR

“Just a coincidence,” he decided, and made his lonely way back to his studio.

Don't remember
If she was my friend
It was a long time ago

* * *

The camera that followed Jerzei relayed its images through a complicated series of data stores and transmitters, finally creating a green-tipped ovoid hologram in a chapel just proud of the catacombs it opened onto.

The thing that watched the hologram laughed.

DWM Preview! Bid Time Return

Following their crippling defeat at the hands of the Movellan Network, the last survivors of the Daleks scattered across the galaxy, realizing that they would again have to rely on humanoid races to assist them in the task of rebuilding. But instead of Robomen, Ogrons or the prisoners they took as slaves, the Supreme Dalek turned its attention to the Charnel House - an ancient order of the most viscious and competent warriors in existence, whose only loyalties were to themselves and their current paymasters. The Daleks tricked a platoon lead by Commander Gustave Lytton into becoming their elite Dalek Task Force and brainwashing them to become mindless Dalek slaves. But Lytton's superb grasp of strategy and tactics were needed badly by the Daleks, and his conditioning was only partial - and the warrior's cunning brain was able to break it entirely.

The attack on Cassius Four succeedly solely down to Lytton's planning and, although no amount of planning could have predicted the arrival of the Doctor and his effect on subsequence events, it is obvious the outcome would have been very different if Lytton had been given free reign by his increasingly paranoid and insane Dalek Masters. Realizing the increasing danger of Davros' private army and that the Daleks were determined to get rid of him Lytton used his intelligence and managed to escape the slaughter of the warehouse (a feat only the TARDIS crew also managed), and took mental command over the two remaining, masterless, Kamelion androids. Although marooned in 1984 London, Lytton was quick to adapt and despite having no official existence soon became a profitable blue collar criminal, his gift strategy easily allowing himself and three loyal if unintelligent comrades to become wealthy. He also had the skill to construct a complicated artificial intelligence with only rudimentary twentieth century components.

Lytton once again found himself caught up in a massive alien invasion through time - only on this occasion it was the Cybermen and they had their own enemies to deal with before the newly regenerated Doctor and Peri turned up. Lytton's risky plan to use the time invasion in order to escape back to his own era was once again compromised by the Doctor's chaotic arrival. However, Lytton's sense of self-preservation was finely tuned and he not only escaped with his life, but also a Cyber scout ship capable of taking him, if not home, than to the more civilized parts of the universe.

Tracking Lytton down would be a time-consuming and frustration process for the peripatic Doctor, though it is clear that of all his human enemies it is Lytton he despises most - from his brutal murder of an unarmed and defenceless woman in Warhead of the Daleks to selling out his only human friends in The Attack of the Cybermen, Lytton's calm ruthlessness and sheer brutality make him a dangerous opponent. It is quite clear that he is capable of returning to his home time and place, but the question is what will the consequences be to the innocent bystanders when he does it?

However, Commander Gustave Lytton is far from the thoughts of the Doctor and Peri at present, which is ironic, as he, like them, is currently visiting the barren desert planet of Celleste which boasts the gambler's paradise, Silver City - a haven of entreprenours, black market traders, wanders, aliens, and many more simply passing through. After the exhausting events of The Enemy Within, the Doctor is drowning his sorrows and trying to think of anything else. Peri, finally giving up on her mentor, is off enjoying herself at Silver City's opulent casino and spending some time with the Governor of Celleste, the philosophical Naraleen. However, there are others visiting Silver City - the Rocinante, a literal doomsday cult lead by the dangerously unstable Archon Tesku (or, as he liked to be called, Loki) who intend to end the universe and everything in it.

Assuming the Doctor can tear himself away from the luxury of his voxnic bar, will even he be able to stop Loki when not only Lytton is there to impede him but also the menagerie of chaos that engulfs Silver City as a side effect of his armageddon device?

These answers are to be found in the fifth story of the new season, Bid Time Return, which is chalk to the previous story's cheese. While The Enemy Within was a small scale, horrific, character based story Bid Time Return is a large, colourful extravaganza of casinos and alien cultists yet both are focussed on bases under siege and how the Doctor and Peri cope with encountering some of the most evil beings they've ever encountered. The title is as much about the desire for the time travellers (even Lytton) to get back the fun times they once had as it is about the extra-dimensional chaos Loki intends to unleash, and like all the best comedy has incredibly dark subject matter at its core.

To balance out the expensive nighttime location filming of the previous story, Bid Time Return is entirely studio bound, with the models and special effects team working wonders to create flying saucers, ruined castles and the vitally important Silver City, itself a parked space station on an asteroid. Also, scenes cut for timing reasons from last year's spectacular The Caves of Androzani have been cunningly woven into the narrative, as have some from the legendary Shada. With its big concepts and characters hiding the fact this is the one of the year's "cheap" stories, producer John Nathan-Turner swear that it will not let up the pace between the heavyweights of The Enemy Within and the six-episode epic The Androgum Inheritance as Lytton is not the only returning enemy in this story.

Joining Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant and Maurice Colbourne as Lytton in Bid Time Return are main cast members Stephen Pacey as Loki, Sabina Franklin as Naraleen, Ben Howard as Gamsool, and Ric Young as Commander Zihra. Considering the impressive list of ingredients and the high standard of stories so far, this unobtrusive two-parter might have the potential to be the winner of the season.

DWM Preview! The Enemy Within

Is there life after death? It is the question which has puzzled man since before the dawn of history. Is there something beyond this mortal coil? All that is certain that once you find out, you're in no position to tell anyone the answer. Even in the fantastical universe the TARDIS occupies, the undiscovered country remains just that. The Doctor has never actually died, merely come close enough to death to trigger a metamorphosis. His various enemies have never come back from the dead, merely being assumed to have died when the reality was different. The dead stay dead. Don't they?

These questions creep unbidden to the minds of the Doctor and Peri as the TARDIS takes them to an unknown point in space and time - a cold, dark forest at midnight. Is it Earth or some distant planet? Is it even a real place? If it is Earth, is it in the past, the present or even the future? The only way to find out is for the time travelers to explore... but are they really prepared for what they will discover?

The previous year dabbled with supernatural horror - the poltergiest activity in The Awakening, the vanishing corpses of Frontios, and of course Mestor's army of the walking dead in The Twin Dilemma. But The Enemy Within takes the Doctor into realms of horror unseen since the Phillip Hinchcliffe days, and the format is more reminiscent of the very start of the program: the majority of the story has the Doctor and Peri alone, trying to find out not only what is happening, but even just where and when in the universe that the TARDIS has unwittingly brought them to.

While the Doctor may spin out the occasional scientific rationalization for what they face, it's clear he's telling it to reassure himself as much as his companion. Science fiction is very much in the background as the story tells a living nightmare of haunted woods, dark houses, ominous thunderstorms, a presence watching and an increasing sense of unreality. As Peri notes in the first scenes, after tackling armies of Cybermen and the like, a lonely night in a dense forest should be a piece of cake. But it manifestly isn't and by the end of just the second episode both our heroes will be at the brink.

The Enemy Within is four episodes of unsettling fear and outright horror - a monster bursting out of the swamp is sometimes not as terrifying as the suggestion of there being something in the corridor outside your bedroom. Characters appear and disappear, leaving it for the audience to deduce if they have fled, been killed, kidnapped, or if they ever truly existed. As time and space themselves seem to twist and decay, there are suggestions that this is a harbinger of the apocalypse itself... Following the psychological horror of The Haunting, the full blown base-under-siege terror of The Evil Dead and pretty much every Hammer Horror film made, if there is a story in this season that will frighten the viewers, it's this one.

The small cast is still a notable one. Michael Sheard, last seen in the debut of the Fifth Doctor, Castrovalva, plays the Colonel. His sinister family comprise of the three brothers Theodore, Maurice and Daniel played by Jon Wyman, James Harvey and Mark Elliot respectively. Carol Hawkins, who appeared in Blake's 7 with Colin Baker, plays Tracey, while Emily is Sally Harrison. The resentful manservant Pascoe is portrayed by Dicken Ashworth while Lenny O'Taiy provides the spectral Voice. Also making cameos as "the first ghost" is David Banks, better known for being the Cyberleader, having already appeared in The Attack of the Cybermen at the start of the season. His companion, the "second ghost" is Gavin Richards - pictured - perhaps most famous as playing the dangerously foolish 'Maniac' in Dario Fo's The Accidental Death of An Anarchist, which he adapted specifically for English audiences in 1980.

Filmed almost entirely on location in the Cambridge forests and Stargreaves House, the only studio recording was for the TARDIS control room sequences and special cutaways to "the Beyond" which will be created entirely by special effects. The precise details of the plot beyond the first half of the first episode are a closely guarded secret, though the idea of the Daleks, Ice Warriors, Lytton or old companions returning in a haunted house story seem unlikely - which might not mean it won't happen. A new monster has been created to menace the Doctor, based on Edvard Munch's The Scream and simply refered to as "the creature" by cast and crew.

So, stand by for four weeks of unrelenting terror directed by Graham Harper, late of the fifth Doctor's swansong The Caves of Androzani, the first ever story the BBC will warn viewers is not suitable for young children or those of you who may have a nervous disposition - surely the best way to get those groups watching! The Enemy Within will no doubt make more than a few viewers decide to sleep with the light on, even though they have a luxury that the Doctor and Peri do not: the knowledge that it's just a television programme. "This story will shock the viewers in more ways than just the obvious thrills and scares," is all producer John Nathan-Turner is willing to say on the story, "it is a line drawn in the sand. After this, Doctor Who may never be the same again..."

- anonymous, Doctor Who Magazine # 95, November 1984

Pictures: A portrait of Nicola Bryant as Peri; Gavin Richards is a discarnate entity, a ghost from the past; and the creature in the woods...

Next Time: The Twin Dilemma

(The logo forms)

NEXT TIME...

(The Minister reviews the situation.)

MINISTER: 13 SI troopers murdered. One missing in action. The Sylvest Twins kidnapped. All under your very nose by Jacondan insurgents.

(The Doctor moves through the ruined city.)

DOCTOR: (VO) If we perish on Joconda it will not be because of our own belief we cannot win through.

(The Doctor is talking with Azmael.)

DOCTOR: I’ve encountered plenty of power-mad megolomaniacs before. This one just happens to be a slug with delusions of grandeur.

AZMAEL: How many slugs have you met that can walk around, read minds and control gravity?

DOCTOR: Thirteen. Next question

(Romulus and Remus play backgammon.)

(Energy surges out of Mestor on his throne.)

(Fast forward as the Doctor smashes the TARDIS console with a hammer and runs for it.)

MESTOR: (VO) You are merely egocentric, willful and quite, quite mad.

(The Doctor spins around and points accusingly.)

DOCTOR: You doctrinaire! You back-stabbing treacherous coward!

(Azmael opens the revitalizer.)

(The Gravis waves its tentacles. The guards collapse, fast forward.)

DOCTOR: (VO) And I’ll destroy your kind, Mestor... every last... one!

(The Doctor peers through the air duct.)

(The Doctor double takes.)

NOMA: (VO) This Time Lord is a merciful being who believes in the sanctity of life. I do not.

(Mestor's face changes colour - blue, green, red, purple...)

(Colours change as the Doctor stares at his shattered reflection.)

(Mestor fires a blast of mental energy at Azmael who convulses while the Doctor watches on, helpless.)

HUGO: (VO) Too late, Doctor. This is where I win. This is where you die. And you cannot prevent it from happening.

DOCTOR: You’d be surprised how many people tell me that.

(The Doctor hurls a bottle at Mestor, which explodes. Drak watches on.)

(The fleet opens fire.)

(The reinforcement troopers are surrounded by laughing zombies.)

(The zombies close in on the fleeing Minister and Fabian.)

DOCTOR: (VO) Arrogance? If there’s anyone being arrogant, it’s you, you ichthyophagous parasite!

(The TARDIS scanner opens to show the forest.)

(Space ships explode.)

(Hugo and Peri recoil.)

DOCTOR: I’ve decided to prioritize saving the universe over soothing the irretrievably damaged ego of a spoiled American brat like you!

(The zombie Jacondans rise out of the grass.)

(Hugo, the Minister and Fabian flee down the passages of the palace.)

MESTOR: (VO) All possible futures are collapsing. Events are leading to one moment... the moment of transcendence will occur. And as of that moment, every living thing in this universe will be my creature, bound to my will and nothing else!!

(The Doctor is panicked.)

(DOCTOR WHO...)

Next Time: Warhead of the Daleks

(The logo forms.)

NEXT TIME...

(Action stations in the prison command deck. Mercer, Phins and Osborn are working. An alarm blares in the background.)

MERCER: (VO) Operate the deflector shield, seal the airlocks!

(The battlecruiser slides down beside the space station.)

PHIN: Uh, is it a good time to mention the cruiser’s closing in on us? Thought not.

(The TARDIS is shaking violently. The Doctor grips the console while Tegan helps the concussed Turlough.)

TURLOUGH: There must be some way to get free!

(A bogus policeman opens fire with his machine gun. The builders drop dead.)

(Tegan and Turlough watch as the Doctor is flung away from the console.)

(The prison crew are huddled behind crates facing the airlock. The sheild explodes.)

(The wall slides back to reveal a Dalek.)

DALEK: EXTERMINATE!

DOCTOR: Take cover!

DALEK: EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!!!!!

(The Daleks open fire on Mercer and Styles.)

(Archer sends the grenades over into the battlefield and two advancing Daleks are caught in another explosion.)

(Lytton shoves the Doctor onto the analysis couch. Kamelion watches on.)

SUPREME DALEK: (VO) ACTIVATE THE TIME CORRIDOR. MAXIMUM POWER.

(A Dalek shoots the fake Archer.)

(Lytton stands outside Davros' unit. A guard is by the controls.)

LYTTON: (VO) Davros, the progenitor of evil. How appropriate.

(The guard operates controls. The sheild rises to reveal Davros.)

DAVROS: The Movellans won the war?

LYTTON: More the point, the Daleks lost the war, Davros. They were totally defeated.

(Galloway is exterminated and his body falls down the stairs.)

(Kiston zaps the exposed Daleks.)

DAVROS: Now we can begin again.

(Lytton aims his gun at the floored Doctor.)

(The Dalek bursts into the top floor of the warehouse.)

DALEK: ALL HUMANS ARE TO BE EXTERMINATED! EXTERMINATED! EXTERMINATE!

(DOCTOR WHO...)