Doctor Who: The Haunting Of Thomas Brewster
Young Thomas Brewster hasn’t exactly led a charmed life. Orphaned at the age of five, he winds up in the London workhouses and is eventually handed off to a vile man who forces young men into a life of virtual slavery, searching the banks of the Thames for valuable cargo thrown overboard by corrupt boat skippers who don’t want to pay taxes on what they’re carrying (or smuggling). But from his mother’s funeral onward, there have been two constants in Thomas’ life (aside from suffering): his mother’s ghost speaks to him, and he keeps seeing a tall blue box whose occupants keep asking after him. When he finally meets these two people - a man called the Doctor and a girl named Nyssa - they seem pleasant enough, but they’re an obstacle to his plans. His mother’s ghost has given Thomas instructions to build a time machine to change the future - an act which she assures him will reunite them at last. And when Thomas’ makeshift time machine isn’t enough to change history to his mother’s liking, she tells him to steal the Doctor’s TARDIS instead…
written by Jonathan Morris
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Simon RobinsonCast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Leslie Ash (Mother), Christian Coulson (Robert McIntosh), John Pickard (Thomas Brewster), Barry McCarthy (Creek), Sid Mitchell (Pickens), Trevor Cooper (Shanks)
Timeline: between Renaissance Of The Daleks and The Boy That Time Forgot
Review: An intriguing historical romp of the kind that Peter Davison’s Doctor didn’t get to have much of on TV, The Haunting Of Thomas Brewster unfolds from two different perspectives: episodes one and four are told from Thomas’ viewpoint, complete with first-person narration, while the second and third episodes are heard from a perspective more like a typical Doctor Who adventure, with the Doctor and Nyssa at the forefront. Some events overlap between the two perspectives, and in some cases we don’t find out until much later why some things have been happening. It’s an intriguing narrative device - the love child of Creatures Of Beauty and Flip-Flop. (more…)
Responding to an Ice Warrior ambassador’s distress call, the Doctor, Peri and Erimem wind up on a doomed ship on a crash course for the planet Peladon, a world the Doctor has visited before. The Ice Warrior’s ship breaks up as it begins to enter the atmosphere, stranding the TARDIS in orbit as the crew cabin plummets to the planet below. On Peladon, a recent tragedy has left the planet without its queen, and a young prince prepares to take the throne on the eve of his wedding to a princess from Earth. But the prince, among others, has been hearing a mysterious voice, bidding all who hear it to offer up a sacrifice of royal blood - and any royal blood, from the arriving princess to Erimem, will suffice to unlock an ancient terror similar to one that the Doctor has faced before.