Give ‘Em The Axe
So certain is the Riddler that he has rid himself of Batman and Robin that he calls Commissioner Gordon to report the Dynamic Duo’s death. They speed to the Gotham City Museum to prevent the Riddler from stealing the Incan artifacts, but only Robin can make it into the museum – and is promptly caught by the Riddler’s goons. Now it falls to Batman alone to bring the Riddler to justice.
written by Jack Paritz & Bob Rodgers
directed by James B. Clark
music by Nelson Riddle / Batman theme by Neal Hefti
Cast: Adam West (Batman), Burt Ward (Robin), Alan Napier (Alfred), Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon), Stafford Repp (Chief O’Hara), Madge Blake (Mrs. Cooper), Frank Gorshin (The Riddler), Linda Scott (Moth), Joey Tata (Tallow), Michael Greene (Matches)
LogBook entry by Earl Green
Notes: The Baron of the Forest People is an uncanny prediction of Brian Blessed’s character in the Flash Gordon movie, which was still two years away from premiering. Quark says he and Ficus have served together for years, even though Ficus made his first appearance after the pilot. Arguably the weakest episode of the show’s short run, this installment is essentially a repeat of May The Source Be With You in a different setting.
Cast: Bill Bixby (David Bruce Banner), Jack Colvin (Jack McGee), Lou Ferrigno (The Hulk), Robert Alda (Jason Laird), Jack Kruschen (Norman Abrams), Arny Freeman (Leo Kahn), Pamela Shoop (Carol Abrams), Karl Held (Jonathan), Michael Mancini (Hank), Simmy Bowe (Mr. Burns), Al Fann (Robert Benson)
Guest Cast: Jere Burns (Breughel), Rick Ducommon (Mahler), Charles Rocket (Ned Grossberg), Hank Garrett (Ashful), Virginia Kiser (Julia Formby), Lee Wilkof (Pat Zein), Billie Bird (Florence Nightingale), Ken Swofford (Gorrister), Viola Kates Stimpson (?), Urene Olga Lopez (?), Pearl Shear (?), Ricardo Gutierrez (Martinez), Skip O’Brien (?), Matt Roe (?), John Davey (?), Taylor Presnell (?), Heath Jobes (?)
The TARDIS arrives on what appears to be an asteroid with a city on it, a city where the cars, the people and even the buildings have turned to stone. Some of the human colonists on the asteroid have escaped that fate – some of them steeped in Australian Aboriginal lore, and others much more determined to return the colony to normality, by brute force if necessary. The strange situation is not helped by the arrival of a Galyari ship, its crew determined to salvage something from the asteroid before they leave. When the Doctor vanishes into something called the Dreaming, and Ace is knocked out cold, Hex finds himself on his own in a situation he can barely even begin to fathom.
Unless it was of Hex’s scenes, that is. Philip Olivier continues to make his new TARDIS traveler likeable, and when he’s thrust into danger that’s beyond what he can grasp, his part of the story quickly becomes the most compelling thing to follow. Ace has to deal with an uncooperative brute determined to gain control of the situation by any means necessary – hardly a situation she hasn’t been in before – while the Doctor finds himself in bizarrely unfamiliar circumstances to which he reacts with what almost seems like calm familiarity. Sophie Aldred and Sylvester McCoy turn in fine performances, and the first episode is gripping stuff, but it gets a bit muddled after that, leaving the cast to do the best they can with what the script gives them. There are even tantalizing hints that we’ll follow up on the Galyari’s relationship with the Doctor – something explored much more deeply in The Sandman – but even that doesn’t materialize.
After returning from another brush with death in Antarctica, Sarah, Josh and Will pry into a research company with ties to Hilda Winters – and to the secret society that has twice tried to kill Sarah. Protests fill the streets outside the company’s research center, where Josh finds his environmentalist friend Maude worried about her daughter, who managed to get inside the building but never returned. Will uses his medical credentials to gain access to the center, only to discover that he is expected. Sir Donald Wakefield, a terminally ill multimillionaire who has made recent news headlines by planning to be on the first passenger flight into space, contacts Sarah and reveals that he heads up another faction of the secret society, and warns her that one of her closest friends has orders to kill her. When the society’s more violent faction starts a countdown to the release of a deadly bio-engineered plague, they name their price for stopping the outbreak: Sarah must lay down her life willingly.
The TARDIS is drawn to a meeting with General Tillington, an American general heading up an anti-alien agency called Global Warning in the U.K., in 2158 – a year after the Daleks should have overrun the entire planet to begin a ten-year occupation of Earth. But the Daleks are on Earth as tiny toys that are all the rage among kids and collectors. Global Warning employs a number of “time sensitives” who foresee the Dalek invasion that the Doctor thinks should be in progress, and yet they can’t pin down when or how it will happen, and for that matter, with the timeline apparently already disrupted, neither can the Doctor. With the help of Tillington’s seemingly rebellious son Wilton, the Doctor escapes and returns to the TARDIS and begins trying to track down Nyssa, who he left in an earlier point in Earth’s history to test a piece of temporal communications equipment she’d invented. But Nyssa isn’t where or when he left her – she and one of the Knights Templar who was pursuing her have somehow been transported to the American Civil War, where they aid a wounded former slave. The Doctor rescues them, but the TARDIS then leaps into the heart of the Vietnam War, where they rescue yet another passenger, a tough-talking female helicopter pilot. But unknown to the Doctor, Wilton has brought his toy collection with him – the miniature Daleks – and the tiny but deadly Daleks sieze control of the TARDIS. They need the Doctor’s time machine – and, of course, him to pilot it – to launch a new and more devastating invasion of Earth.
After a particularly harrowing adventure, the Doctor promises to take Ace and Hex somewhere where they can all relax, and by virtue of having both a spa and a beer tent, the Festival of the Twin Moons of Tuin wins the toss. But of course, the Doctor hasn’t shared everything he knows about Tuin: the societies of its twin moons, despite being very closely related biologically, are locked in a seemingly endless war, from which the Festival is the only break in hostilities. Furthermore, the Doctor takes it upon himself to bring that war to an end, having read some local lore. He declares himself the suitor to an unknown bride, the marriage of whom will bring peace to Tuin at last. But instead of being one step ahead of the game, this time the Doctor’s information is woefully incomplete, as he has no idea who he’ll be marrying. And even when the bride is revealed, the Doctor discovers that the peace their wedding vows will bring will not be the peace of a war ended, but the peace of a dead world.