Day: January 15, 1960

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1960s Season 1 Twilight Zone

I Shot An Arrow Into The Air

The Twilight ZoneA rocket manned by eight astronauts is launched, and then disappears off of the scopes. Of the eight-man crew, four survive the rocket’s crash landing, into what they believe to be an asteroid near Earth’s orbit, since the sun is approximately the same size in the sky. The asteroid has a conveniently breathable atmosphere, but between them, the four survivors have only five gallons of water. One of them suffered critical injuries in the crash, but the mission’s commander refuses to entertain notions that water no longer be “wasted” on the injured. His subordinates, however, are feeling less charitable, until the expedition is whittled down to a single survivor…who finds that he’s far closer to home than he thought.

Download this episode via Amazonteleplay by Rod Serling
based on the story by Madelon Champion
directed by Stuart Rosenberg
music not credited

The Twilight ZoneCast: Dewey Martin (Corey), Edward Binns (Colonel Donlin), Ted Otis (Pierson), Harry Bartell (Langford), Leslie Barrett (Brandt)

Notes: The “asteroid” exteriors were shot in Death Valley, so it’s likely that the cast members were in need of water almost as badly as their characters…

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Classic Season 09 Doctor Who

Day Of The Daleks Part 3

Doctor WhoTrying to follow the escaped future guerillas, the Doctor finds them – just moments before they are cornered by a Dalek that has traveled through time to 20th century Earth. The guerillas activate their time travel device, transporting themselves and to Doctor to their native time and place: 22nd century Earth under totalitarian Dalek control. The Doctor parts ways with his would-be captors because he wants to find Jo; the Doctor is captures by the Ogrons, ape-like sevant thugs controlled by the Daleks. He is saved by the Controller, in whose company Jo has been staying, but when the Doctor doesn’t show due respect to the Daleks’ human lackey, he is handed over to them for interrogation.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Louis Marks
directed by Paul Bernard
music by Dudley Simpson

Doctor WhoCast: Jon Pertwee (The Doctor), Katy Manning (Jo Grant), Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), John Levene (Sergeant Benton), Richard Franklin (Captain Yates), Jean McFarlane (Miss Paget), Wilfrid Carter (Sir Reginald Styles), Tim Condren (Guerilla), John Scott Martin (Chief Dalek), Oliver Gilbert, Peter Messaline (Dalek voices), Aubrey Woods (Controller), Deborah Brayshaw (Technician), Gypsie Kemp (Radio Operator), Anna Barry (Anat), Jimmy Winston (Shura), Scott Fredericks (Boaz), Valentine Palmer (Monia), Andrew Carr (Guard), Peter Hill (Manager), George Raistrick (Guard), Alex MacIntosh (TV Reporter), Rick Lester, Maurice Bush, Frank Menzies, Bruce Wells, Geoffrey Todd, David Joyce (Ogrons), Ricky Newby, Murphy Grumbar (Daleks)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Season 1 Space: 1999

Ring Around The Moon

Space: 1999A glowing red orb appears near the moon, and the first Alpha crewman who sees it, Ted Clifford, goes berzerk, transmitting sensitive information to the orb, attacking anyone who attempts to stop him, and ultimately begging for help just before he falls over dead. The orb envelops the moon with a glowing light while still moving closer. The mysterious object then transmits a warning to Moonbase Alpha: everyone there is a prisoner of the planet Triton. When Koenig dispatches Carter to inspect the orb up close in an Eagle, the object disables the ship’s crew and sends the Eagle tumbling back to the moon, out of control. A rescue party goes to retrieve the ship and Carter, the only survivor, but the orb descends again, extending its influence to Helena and attacking Koenig when he attempts to free her. By the time Koenig comes around, Helena has vanished. Koenig insists on making a return visit to the orb to free Helena, and Carter – disturbed that he alone survived the previous Eagle’s flight – insists on going with him. But Koenig has an ace up his sleeve: Bergman has devised a force field allowing them to get closer. Though they make their way past the probe’s initial attack, it still incapacitates the Eagle’s pilots and sends them back to the moon (though a carefully preprogrammed autopilot prevents another crash landing). This time, however, the Orb returns to the moon, depositing Helena at Alpha. But is she under her own control…or is she doing the bidding of Triton?

Order the DVDswritten by Edward di Lorenzo
directed by Ray Austin
music by Barry Gray
additional music by Vic Elms

Guest Cast: Prentis Hancock (Paul Morrow), Clifton Jones (David Kano), Zienia Merton (Sandra Benes), Anton Phillips (Dr. Mathias), Nick Tate (Alan Carter), Max Faulkner (Ted Clifford)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Season 1 Wonder Woman

Judgment From Outer Space – Part 1

Wonder WomanA UFO lands just outside of Washington, bearing Andros, a visitor from a peaceful league of alien worlds. As humans grows closer to the secret of splitting the atom and taking its first steps into space, these other worlds are becoming uneasy that the people of Earth will export war to the rest of space. Andros has been sent to survey Earth to see if the human race is worthy of survival, and he’s not impressed with the welcome he receives from Washington. A Nazi spy posing as a Swedish reporter alerts the Axis to Andros’ presence, and capturing him – and harnessing his power over such natural forces as weather – becomes a top priority. Andros has found a kindred spirit in Wonder Woman, who is also an outsider in human society, but when he is kidnapped by the Nazis, she may be powerless to convince Andros’ people not to destroy Earth.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Stephen Kandel
directed by Alan Crosland
music by Artie Kane

Wonder WomanCast: Lynda Carter (Diana Prince / Wonder Woman), Lyle Waggoner (Major Steve Trevor), Richard Eastham (General Blankenship), Beatrice Colen (Etta Candy), Tim O’Connor (Andros), Kurt Kaszner (General Von Dreiberg), Janet MacLachlan (Sakri), Scott Hylands (Paul Bjornsen), Archie Johnson (General Zachary Kane), Vic Perrin (Gorel), Patrick Skelton (Gormsby), Fil Formicola (Sergeant)

Wonder WomanNotes: Written by Stephen Kandel (who brought the character of Harry Mudd to classic Star Trek), this two-parter is top-heavy with science fiction royalty. Tim O’Connor had already appeared in The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, and Search, but was still two years away from his signature genre role as Dr. Huer in Buck Rogers In The 25th Century. Vic Perrin could be heard in every episode of The Outer Limits as the control voice instructing viewers not to adjust their televisions. Janet MacLachlan guest starred in the original Star Trek and The Six Million Dollar Man. Scott Hylands appeared in Earth II and Project UFO, and would go on to guest star on The X-Files before landing a regular role in the 21st century reboot of V.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Martian Chronicles, The

The Expeditions

The Martian ChroniclesJuly 1976: Viking 1, an unmanned space probe, lands on Mars and transmits the first pictures of its surface back to Earth. No life is found, confounding centuries of speculation about canals and the aliens who might have constructed them.

January 1999: The first manned mission to Mars lifts off from Cape Canaveral, carrying a team of three astronauts to Mars. Unknown to them, their arrival has been anticipated by an advanced race of Martians whose presence went undetected by the Viking probes. When the astronauts from Earth land, a xenophobic Martian kills them before they even have a chance to walk on Martian soil.

April 2000: A second manned mission is launched to Mars, and its three-man crew is stunned when the Martian dust clears to reveal a very Earthlike environment. But it’s not the true Martian civilization exposed at last; instead, it’s an illusion tailor-made to emulate memories plucked out of the Earthmen’s minds. At first the astronauts are taken in by the illusion, but when they begin to question it and try to escape it, the Martians show their true form and intent, allowing the astronauts to die without getting a message off to Earth about life on Mars.

June 2001: Despite the tragedy, a more extensive follow-up mission is launched, with a larger crew commanded by Colonel John Wilder, who has overseen the previous missions from Earth. Almost immediately upon landing, evidence of a Martian civilization, seemingly abandoned, is found. There’s no longer any denying the presence of life there, though the monuments seem to be abandoned, perhaps evidence of an extinct civilization. Major Jeff Spender, Wilder’s right-hand man on Earth and hand-picked to join him on this mission, ventures off into the Martian ruins himself and comes back a changed man. But changed into what?

teleplay by Richard Matheson
based on the novel by Ray Bradbury
directed by Michael Anderson
music by Stanley Myers / electronic music by Richard Harvey

Cast: Rock Hudson (Colonel John Wilder), Gayle Hunnicutt (Ruth Wilder), Bernie Casey (Maj. Jeff Spender), Christopher Connelly (Ben Driscoll), Nicholas Hammond (Arthur Black), Roddy McDowall (Father Stone), Darren McGavin (Sam Parkhill), Bernadette Peters (Genevieve Seltzer), Maria Schell (Anna Lustig), Joyce Van Patten (Elma Parkhill), Fritz Weaver (Father Peregrine), Linda Lou Allen (Marilyn Becker), Michael Anderson Jr. (David Lustig), Robert Beatty (General Halstead), James Faulkner (Mr. K), John Finch (Christ), Terence Longdon (Wise Martian), Barry Morse (Peter Hathaway), Nyree Dawn Porter (Alice Hathaway), Wolfgang Reichmann (Lafe Lustig), Maggie Wright (Ylla), John Cassady (Briggs), Alison Elliott (Lavinia Spaulding), Vadim Glowna (Sam Hinston), Richard Heffer (Capt. Conover), Derek Lamden (Sandship Martian), Peter Marinker (McClure), Richard Oldfield (Capt. York), Anthony Pullen-Shaw (Edward Black), Burnell Tucker (Bill Wilder)

The Martian ChroniclesNotes: A lavish co-production between NBC and the BBC, shot on “otherworldly” Lanzarote (a volcanic island where the BBC would also later shoot the 1984 Doctor Who story Planet Of Fire), The Martian Chronicles was intended to be the major draw to NBC’s fall 1979 season. But Ray Bradbury himself, the author of the original stories the miniseries was based on, torpedoed that launch by calling the TV adaptation out as “boring” in a publicity appearance. With the creator of its major premiere alerting the public to a stinker, NBC rescheduled the miniseries to run during the winter doldrums of January 1980, before the ratings sweeps month of February (for which NBC already had a dire forecast, since the 1980 Winter Olympics would be airing during February on rival network ABC, likely trouncing anything scheduled against the games by NBC or CBS). The BBC didn’t air The Martian Chronicles until August 1980.

The show’s decks are stacked with genre veterans, including Roddy McDowall (Planet Of The Apes), Maria Schell and Barry Morse (Space: 1999), and Darren McGavin (Kolchak: The Night Stalker). Robert Beatty had appeared in pivotal episodes of Doctor Who (The Tenth Planet) and Blake’s 7 (The Way Back). Bernie Casey would appear in both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 during the 1990s. (Tangentially, Rock Hudson had starred in 1971’s creepy non-genre movie Pretty Maids All In A Row, written and produced by one Gene Roddenberry.) Director Michael Anderson also had a well-known genre credit under his belt, the 1976 SF cult classic Logan’s Run, while one of composer Stanley Myers’ earliest TV music credits was for the 1964 Doctor Who story Marco Polo.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Buck Rogers Season 2

Time Of The Hawk

Buck Rogers In The 25th CenturyBuck, Wilma and Twiki have been reassigned to the deep-space exploration ship Searcher on a mission to search for any colonies that may have been established by humans who escaped Earth around the time of the holocaust. Their first evidence of human colonists, however, is a primitive ship found adrift, its hull shattered and all but one of its crew dead. The lone survivors warns Buck with his last breath that someone called “Hawk” is on a mission to exterminate every human, every human ship, and every human colony he can find. The survivor gives them one tip about where Hawk might be found, and the Searcher changes its course so Buck can follow up on the lead. A neutral planet turns out to be the current lair of Hawk, and Buck asks Wilma to meet him there; against her better judgement, Wilma brings a passenger along: Dr. Goodfellow, the Searcher’s elderly but brilliant chief scientist.

Buck doesn’t find Hawk, but he does find Hawk’s mate, Koori, half-human and half-bird, and bets that if he takes Koori with him, Hawk will follow. Hawk does indeed catch up with Buck, grappling the earthman’s starfighter with the harpoon-like claws of his own ship – but impaling Koori in the process. Both ships land, and Buck helps Hawk take Koori to a healer who lives in a distant cave on the planet, both men postponing their fight until she can be saved. Hawk tells Buck that he and Koori are the last of their kind, hunted to extinction by humans, and that his fight is just. Buck tries to tell Hawk that the actions of human colonists don’t necessarily reflect the current state of humanity on Earth, but Hawk is not swayed – when Koori is either restored to health or laid to rest, Hawk and Buck will fight to the death.

Order the DVDswritten by Norman Hudis
directed by Vincent McEveety
music by Bruce Broughton

Cast: Gil Gerard (Buck Rogers), Erin Gray (Colonel Wilma Deering), Thom Christopher (Hawk), Jay Garner (Admiral Asimov), Wilfred Hyde-White (Dr. Goodfellow), Felix Silla (Twiki), Jeff David (voice of Crichton), Barbara Luna (Koori), Lance Le Gault (Flagg), David Opatoshu (Llamajuna), Sid Haig (Pratt), Kenneth O’Brien (Captain), Dennis Haysbert (Communication-Probe Officer), Lavelle Roby (Thromis), Michael Fox (High Judge), Andre Harvey (Thordis), J. Christopher O’Connor (Young Lieutenant), Tim O’Keefe (Bailiff), Ken Chandler (Court Clerk), Susan McIver (Simmons)

Notes: Crichton admits, somewhat reluctantly, that he obeys Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, and even more begrudgingly admits that an ancestor of Admiral Asimov wrote those laws. The Crichton prop first appeared early in the first season, but as a large clock instead of a robot. Twiki’s voice was replaced for part of this season as part of the sweeping changes introduced by new executive producer John Mantley, but eventually Mel Blanc was brought back to provide Twiki’s voice.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
KTMA Season Mystery Science Theater 3000

Experiment K09: Phase IV

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The KTMA SeasonMST3K Story: The Mads are in trouble. Their boss, “Old Leadbottom”, has found out they’ve been embezzling money for their experiment on Joel. To make matters worse, they’ve spent their grant money on customizing the Mad Scientist-mobile. They need $40,000 to bring Joel back, so they sold his car. Joel tells them he had $40,000 in it all along, so they send him “the ant movie” as punishment. Joel takes the opportunity of a break to teach the Bots the “Three Robotic Laws”, but they don’t take them seriously, stating the third law is “Give a hoot, don’t pollute.” Later, Joel and the Bots discuss what they’re going to do when they get back to Earth. A game of “I Spy” concludes with an impromptu a cappella rendition of “Wipe Out”. After the movie, Joel announces that they are looking into creating a fan club and asks people who are interested to call in. Joel ends the broadcast by having Crow and Gypsy recite the “Fourth Robotic Law”, which he wrote himself: “Don’t be surprised if somewhere, sometime, when you least expect it, someone walks up to you and says ‘Don’t be surprised if somewhere, sometime, when you least expect it, someone walks up to you and says “Don’t be surprised…”‘”

Phase IV Story: A mysterious solar phenomenon has caused odd behavior amongst the world’s ant population. James Lesko, a specialist in game theory, joins Dr. Ernest D. Hobbs in investigating the ants’ activities. Hobbs had found that ants had been engaging in a high level of socialization: meeting and planning, even across species. The scientists operate in a biosphere outside a housing development that had been overrun by the ants. The only people in the area are a farmer named Eldridge, his wife Mildred, granddaughter Kendra and hired hand Clete. Once they have settled in, Hobbs and Lesko find that the ants have built tall towers, a clear indication of their advanced intelligence. The scientists attempt to contact the ants, with Hobbs finally resorting to destroying their towers to rile them. The ants respond by destroying the scientists’ generator. The Eldridge family has also been run off of their farm. Fleeing to the scientists’ camp, they are caught in a barrage of poison sent by Hobbs to stop the ants. The only survivor is Kendra. Once rescued, Kendra upsets an experiment Hobbs is performing on some of the ants, resulting in Hobbs being bitten and the ants getting a sample of the scientist’s poison. The ants, now immune, step up their attacks: disabling the biosphere’s communications and heating it to the point where the computers fail. The poison from the bite causes Hobbs to become increasingly erratic. He hatches a plan to defeat the ants by destroying their Queen. Meanwhile, Lesko uses geometry to communicate with the ants and reaches the conclusion that the ants want one of them. Kendra, thinking it’s she the ants are after, runs away, giving herself over to the ants. Hobbs tries to go after the Queen himself, but the ants have dug a trap for him and he succumbs. Lesko, with no options left, tries to execute Hobbs’ plan. Eventually, he finds what he believes to be the Queen’s lair, only to discover Kendra: safe, but altered. He comes to the realization that it was the two of them the ants wanted all along. The world belongs to the ants now and mankind will be taught its place.

MST3K segments written by Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Josh Weinstein, Jim Mallon & Kevin Murphy
MST3K segments directed by Vince Rodriguez
Phase IV written by Mayo Simon
Phase IV directed by Saul Bass
Phase IV music by Brian Gascoigne

MST3K Guest Cast: none

Phase IV Cast: Nigel Davenport (Hobbs), Michael Murphy (Lesko), Lynne Frederick (Kendra), Alan Gifford (Mr. Eldridge), Robert Henderson (Clete), Helen Horton (Mildred)

LogBook entry by Philip R. Frey

Categories
Season 02 Star Trek Voyager

Prototype

Star Trek: VoyagerStardate not given: The crew beams aboard a damaged robot of humanoid design and B’Elanna takes up its repair as a challenge. When she manages to repair its power module, the robot asks her to produce more power modules so that more robots can be created. When Janeway objects, the robots kidnap Torres and threaten to destroy Voyager unless she cooperates. But the Praelor turn out not to be the only robots in the quadrant.

Order the DVDswritten by Nicholas Corea
directed by Jonathan Frakes
music by Dennis McCarthy

Cast: Kate Mulgrew (Captain Kathryn Janeway), Robert Beltran (Chakotay), Roxann Biggs-Dawson (B’Elanna Torres), Jennifer Lien (Kes), Robert Duncan McNeill (Tom Paris), Ethan Phillips (Neelix), Robert Picardo (The Doctor), Tim Russ (Tuvok), Garrett Wang (Ensign Harry Kim), Rick Worthy (3947/Cravic 122), Hugh Hodgin (6263/Prototype)

LogBook entry by Paul Campbell

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Season 1 Xena: Warrior Princess

Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts

Xena: Warrior PrincessQueen Helen has disturbing nightmares that show a man in shadows killing the soldiers trying to protect her. She sends her personal guard Miltides to find Xena. Before he can reach the warrior princess, he is attacked. Xena and Gabrielle are close by and fight off his attackers. But Miltides has been stabbed and he is dying. He barely manages to give Helen’s message to Xena in time. Xena and Gabrielle fight their way through the Greek forces and into Troy. They are greeted by Gabrielle’s ex-fiance’ Perdicas. The warrior leaves the two friends to find Helen. The queen tells her that she wants Xena to take her to Menelaus, hoping that will end the war. But Xena doesn’t agree. She tells Helen that Paris would just come after her. Deophobus, Paris’ brother, is upset that Xena managed to get in to see the queen. He insists that the warrior princess be taken to see Paris. As Xena is trying to convince Paris that she is there to help, one of Deophobus’ personal guards appears. He was one of the men who attacked Miltides. He has a scar on his face where Xena cut him with her sword. She fights him again briefly, before Deophobus stabs him. Paris then accepts Xena’s offer. The warrior returns to Gabrielle and tells her why Helen asked to see her. She tells her to stay with Perdicas while she checks things out. She then spots Helen trying to sneak out of the city. As they are talking, Xena notices Deophobus exiting the city through a secret doorway. She follows him to the Greek army’s camp and watches as he talks to Menelaus.

Xena returns to the castle to tell Paris and Helen about what she saw. But Deophobus shows up and tells them that he and Menelaus were discussing the Greek army’s surrender. He convinces his brother that Xena cannot be trusted, and the king has her thrown into prison. Before leaving, the Greeks left a large wooden horse outside the gates. The Trojans bring it into the city and begin their celebrations.

Order the DVDswritten by Adam Armus and Nora Kay Foster
directed by Roy Thomas and Janis Hendler
music by Joseph LoDuca

Guest Cast: Gayln Gorg (Helen), Scott Garrison (Perdicas), Ken Blackburn (Menelaus), Warren Carl (Paris), Cameron Rhodes (Deophobus), Adrian Keeling (Miltiades), Peter Ford (Trojan Soldier #2), Matthew Jeffs (Trojan Soldier #1), Geoffrey Knight (Trojan Guard), John Manning (Greek Scout), Aidan MacBride Stewart (Greek Soldier)

LogBook entry by Mary Terrell

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Nowhere Man

Contact

Nowhere ManVeil is contacted by someone who claims to be an insider of the conspiracy that has destroyed his identity. This person claims to be on Veil’s side and offers much helpful information – the identity and location of the one person who issued to orders to erase Veil’s existence, the truth of how Veil’s wife was coerced into cooperating with the conspiracy, and more. When Veil’s contact asks him to pay for these revelations by killing the man whose location he has been given, he begins to suspect that his new ally is simply using him to settle old scores.

Order the DVDswritten by Lawrence Herzog
directed by Reza Badiyi
music by Mark Snow

Cast: Bruce Greenwood (Thomas Veil), Joseph Lambie (Richard Grace), Robin Sachs (The Voice)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Season 03 Star Trek Voyager

Alter Ego

Star Trek: VoyagerStardate 50460.3: The crew begins an analysis of an unusual phenomenon called an inversion nebula which might provide fresh insight into the nature of plasma reactions. Harry falls in love with a holodeck character and when Tuvok attempts to help him use Vulcan mind-control techniques to overcome his infatuation with a computer-generated subroutine, the crew discovers that the object of Harry’s desires is actually an alien life form which has used the holodeck to interact with the crew. But Tuvok’s attempts to help set off a cascade of jealousy which endangers the entire ship.

Order the DVDswritten by Joe Menosky
directed by Robert Picardo
music by Paul Baillargeon

Guest Cast: Sandra Nelson (Marayna), Alexander Enberg (Vorick), Shay Todd (Holowoman), Majel Barrett (Computer Voice)

LogBook entry by Paul Campbell

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Lexx Season 2

Stan’s Trial

LexxAll Stanley Tweedle wants right now is to find just the right girl on just the right pleasure satellite and settle down – in an overnight sort of way. But when the Lexx makes a stop at just such a space station, Stan’s dreams are crushed when he is arrested and subjected to an immediate trial. Before serving as a security guard in the Cluster, Stan ferried top-secret biological data around for a resistance movement fighting His Divine Shadow. When Stan let his guard down and was captured, he surrendered secrets that led to the death of billions – and now he finds that an entire movement has dedicated all of its resources to tracking him down and making him pay without even the pretense of a fair trial. But when Stan gets the chance to turn the tables on his accusers, will he show mercy – or simply prove that he’s capable of the murderous acts for which they blame him?

Order the DVDswritten by Lex Gigeroff and Paul Donovan
directed by Srinivas Krishna
music by Marty Simon

Guest Cast: Nina Franoszek (Jihana), Jeffrey Hirschfield (790), Tom Gallant (Lexx), Benjamin Sadler (Nool), Susanna Metzner (Lissha), Peter James Scollin (Guard 1), Harvey Friedmann (Guard 3)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Season 6 Xena: Warrior Princess

Old Ares Had A Farm

Xena: Warrior PrincessXena and Gabrielle have stopped in a tavern to eat, when the warrior notices some men seated at a nearby table that seem familiar. She goes to question one of them, but he doesn’t want to tell her anything until she puts her pinch on him. He tells Xena that they’ve united under the warlord Gasgar to go after Ares now that he’s mortal. They want revenge on the former god of war for double crossing them.

Away from the village, Ares is walking alone when a man appears and says he’s there to collect the bounty. But before he can do anything, Xena and Gabrielle appear and the man retreats. Ares tells them that he’s been having people want to fight him a lot lately. Xena fills him on how the warlords want his head and tells him he should go undercover. The former god of war says he’d been thinking about becoming a king or a priest. But that’s not what Xena had in mind – she thinks he’d be better off hiding out on a farm.

Order the DVDswritten by R.J. Stewart
directed by Charles Siebert
music by Joseph LoDuca

Guest Cast: Kevin Smith (Ares), Noel Coutts (Gasgar), Kirk Torrance (Demetrius), Charmaine Guest (Greba), Norman Forsey (Dempar), Dai Henwood (Siki), Andrew Kovacevich (Allus), Megan Nicol (Bargirl)

LogBook entry by Mary Terrell

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4th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The King Of Sontar

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS brings the Doctor and Leela to the site of an unlikely sight: Sontarans fighting another Sontaran. But the target of this operation is no ordinary Sontaran. A Sontaran platoon has been sent to kill – and has failed to kill – a seven-foot-tall Sontaran renegade called Strang. Thanks to a mishap with one of the clone warriors’ cloning vats, Strang has received the concentrated DNA of multiple Sontarans, making him almost unstoppable, and he has his eyes set on wiping out Sontar and its race of “inferior” Sontarans. The Doctor believes that the Time Lords have once again deposited him at a critical moment in history to do their dirty work: to stop Strang from making the Sontarans a far more dangerous race. And just as happened on Skaro, the Doctor has grave misgivings about carrying out this assignment… but others feel differently about the matter.

Order this CDwritten by John Dorney
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Jamie Robertson

Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Louise Jameson (Leela), Dan Starkey (Strang / Hutchins), David Collings (Rosato), John Banks (Vilhol / Mercenary), David Seddon (Irving / Garn / Tashan / Mercenary 2), Jenny Funnell (Reaver)

Notes: Technically, this is Leela’s first encounter with the Sontarans, pre-dating The Invasion Of Time.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green