The Ratings War
As the climactic episode of a reality TV show makes its live debut, the Doctor storms into the office of the network’s president to lodge a series of complaints about programming. But the Doctor soon discovers that the network is in the hands of the vicious Beep the Meep, a cute but bloodthirsty creature who plans to bring the people of Earth under his mind control by embedding subliminal instructions into his new children’s program. Even though the Doctor has already taken steps to prevent the domination of the viewing audience, he has failed to destroy the control mechanism that will allow Beep to take control…
written by Steve Lyons
directed by Gary Russell
music by David DarlingtonCast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Toby Longworth (Beep The Meep), Robert Jezek (Roger Lowell), Alistair Lock (Robbie McHale), Jane Goddard (Lucy)
Notes: The traditional Doctor Who opening theme is not heard at the beginning of the episode, and the story closes – rather unusually with the “Delaware Version” of the theme that the BBC Radiophonic Workshop prepared for the TV show’s 1972 season, even though it was ultimately not used. Beep the Meep originally faced off against the fourth Doctor in the 1980 Doctor Who Weekly comic strip “Doctor Who and the Star Beast”, written by Pat Mills and John Wagner, with art by Dave Gibbons; that strip is included in the graphic novel reprint “Doctor Who: The Iron Legion”. Another CD included free with Doctor Who Magazine, The Ratings War was later released as a free podcast in 2011.
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
The Doctor and Charley arrive in Manhattan just before Halloween, 1938. One of the first things Charley encounters upon her first visit to New York City is the body of a recently murdered private detective. When a woman arrives at the gumshoe’s office to hire him, the Doctor impersonates him and agrees to take on the case of her missing uncle (to Charley’s alarm). But things aren’t as they seem – Charley is kidnapped by mobsters, and even the Doctor’s new client isn’t who she seems. As Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater Players prepare to broadcast their infamous panic-inducing radio adaptation of “The War Of The Worlds”, a very real alien invasion is taking place – and the Doctor hopes to use one to fight the other.
On a momentary sidestep after dropping Gravis off harmlessly on an isolated planetoid where it can no longer harm the people of Frontios, the Doctor arrives on Artaris, a primitive world where he meets a gruff warlord named Grayvorn. Grayvorn is en route to a convent whose nuns are entrusting him on a quest for an unidentified Relic. But the Doctor is horrified to learn that the nuns have taken on a new visitor: the irrepressible Time Lady known as Iris Wildthyme, the Doctor’s sometimes old flame and sometimes nuisiance. To make matters even worse, the convent’s Mother Superior has entrusted the only known map leading to the Relic to Iris, and insists that the troublesome time traveler accompany Grayvorn on that quest, with another nun, Sister Jolene, in tow. The Doctor, smelling trouble, tags along, and finds himself more than once keeping Grayvorn and Iris from each other’s throats. The Doctor is also suspicious of Sister Jolene’s motives for coming on the trip – and indeed, those of the Mother Superior who is behind the quest. Is the search for the Relic a deadly trap, or a true holy quest which may require terrible sacrifices of those who undertake it?
