Search Results for: Carole Ann Ford

Hunters Of Earth

Posted on by theLogBook.com

Doctor WhoA year or so into their full-time residence on Earth, the Doctor and Susan try to live relatively normal lives incognito. The Doctor has quietly been stealing electronic components to fix the TARDIS, while Susan attends nearby Coal Hill School. While spending time with her friends (who still regard her interests in science and history as unusual), Susan experiences a severe headache and is then attacked by her fellow students, who are acting strangely (and in some cases, violently). Moments after the Doctor arrives to take her home, a radio disc jockey makes a cryptic dedication to “the Doctor and Sue”, along with a message that makes it clear that someone knows they are time travelers. A newspaper advertisement for electronic parts draws the Doctor’s attention, and he’s not entirely surprised when it turns out to be a trap laid for him. Susan experiences more displays of violence by her fellow Coal Hill students, including some she regards as her friends. In the junkyard at Totter’s Lane, someone scrawls the message “ALIENS OUT” – but how far are they willing to go to make that happen?

Order this CDadapted by Nigel Robinson
directed by John Ainsworth
music by Simon Hunt

Cast: Carole Ann Ford (Susan), Tam Williams (Cedric)

Notes: Susan mentions the (fictional) band John Smith and the Common Men (An Unearthly Child, Fanfare For The Common Men). She began school in the autumn term in 1962, the same time as new schoolmaster Colonel Rook (retired) first appeared. She is more interested in news of the space race than in news of the cold war. The dedication read by the disc jockey is a message from the eleventh Doctor (The Time Machine). The Telstar satellite was launched in 1962, but ceased to function in February 1963. This is significant in dating the story: the Beatles are mentioned as being chart-toppers, and their first UK #1 single, “Please Please Me”, didn’t reach #1 until February 22nd, 1963 – one day after Telstar stopped communicating with Earth. Perhaps the Doctor’s commandeering of the satellite is what caused it to shut down, thus placing this story on the 22nd of February 1963.

Timeline: after Quinnis and before An Unearthly Child

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

The Light At The End

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Doctor Who: The Light At The EndThe Doctor is startled when a flashing red light appears on the TARDIS console. The surprise isn’t that the light has never flashed before, but that it is there at all, where there was no light on the console before. And it’s not just one Doctor, but all of the Doctor’s incarnations.

The eighth Doctor and Charley, after witnessing a strangely disjointed collection of images from the Doctor’s past (and past Doctors), try to follow a trace through time to a London suburb at three minutes after five in the evening on the twenty-third day of November, 1963, but the TARDIS instead deposits them on an alien planet in the middle of a live demonstration of a weapons system capable of immense destruction. The two time travelers are separated, and Charley makes her way back to the TARDIS, just in time for a strange phenomenon to change the TARDIS around her. She finds herself in a different (and yet similar) console room, occupied by a savage woman named Leela and another man who claims to be the Doctor. The eighth Doctor follows, and he and his fourth incarnation try to combine their talents and knowledge to get the TARDIS safely away from this planet. The escape attempt doesn’t go as planned. Charley and Leela inexplicably vanish from the TARDIS.

The sixth and seventh Doctors also find each other on this planet, but are in a different region, where a conference is taking place: a showroom demonstration for other weapons created by the same alien race, the Vess. The seventh Doctor and Ace discover the Master is somehow involved, but then Ace vanishes. The sixth Doctor finds a delegation of Time Lords are an unofficial presence at this weapons sale – members of the Celestial Intervention Agency, led by Straxus, without the knowledge of the High Council of Gallifrey. Peri vanishes, and only then does the sixth Doctor discover the truth: the Master discovered the unauthorized Time Lord expedition and demanded a bribe for their silence. That bribe came in the form of a weapon of the Master’s choice from the Vess arsenal. Straxus knows nothing beyond this, but the Doctor knows enough to threaten to expose Straxus’ presence to the Time Lords; in exchange for the Doctor’s silence, Straxus helps reunite as many of the Doctors as he can.

The fifth Doctor and Nyssa follow the same time trace, but the Doctor is suspicious enough to change the time coordinates, arriving instead at 5:02pm in November 23rd, 1963. The TARDIS crashes through a shed belonging to a man named Bob Dovie, whose wife and children have gone missing. To the Doctor and Nyssa, it is obvious that Dovie has suffered some sort of trauma that has left him in an agitated, distracted state. Dovie’s family are closer to him than he thinks, murdered by the Master. Why has the Doctor’s old enemy chosen to victimize a perfectly average suburban family, how is it connected to the evil Time Lord’s endless quest for vengeance against the Doctor, and what is happening to the Doctor’s companions?

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

Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Peter Davison (The Doctor), Colin Baker (The Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Paul McGann (The Doctor), Louise Jameson (Leela), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Sophie Aldred (Ace), India Fisher (Charley), Geoffrey Beevers (The Master), John Dorney (Bob Dovie), William Russell (Ian Chesterton / The Doctor), Carole Ann Ford (Susan), Maureen O’Brien (Vicki), Peter Purves (Steven), Jean Marsh (Sara Kingdom), Anneke Wills (Polly), Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon / The Doctor). Wendy Padbury (Zoe), Katy Manning (Jo Grant), Janet Fielding (Tegan), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Oliver Hume (Straxus), Nicholas Briggs (The Vess), Benedict Briggs (Kevin Dovie), Tim Treloar (The Doctor)

Notes: Straxus first appeared in part one of Blood Of The Daleks, the eighth Doctor audio adventure which introduced Lucie Miller, but the sixth Doctor would appear to have met Straxus first… at least in the timeline created by the Master, which the Doctors later eliminate. Since Straxus is played here by Oliver Hume, it’s safe to assume that this is an earlier incarnation of Straxus than the incarnations that have been encountered by the eighth Doctor.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

An Adventure In Space And Time

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An Adventure In Space And TimeIn 1963, newly arrived BBC Head of Drama Sydney Newman shakes the stolid BBC establishment with his rebellious attitudes and his desire to make the British broadcaster’s output less posh and more popular. With a 25-minute gap in the Saturday evening schedule to fill, Newman assembles a team to begin working on a new television series called Doctor Who, concerning an eccentric time traveler whose incredibly time-space machine, the TARDIS, is disguised as a 1950s police box. Wanting to appoint a producer to run this show, Newman looks for someone with “piss and vinegar” and settles on Verity Lambert, who had previously worked as his production assistant. But in her new position as the first female producer in the BBC, Verity makes waves… and a few enemies. She bucks conventional wisdom in hiring esteemed character actor William Hartnell to play the part of the Doctor, the show’s wizened and yet ageless time traveler. For his own part, Hartnell has been looking for a role to get him out of a rut of being typecast as tough authority figures and military characters. Verity also finds a willing collaborator in rookie director Waris Hussein, and after months of preparation and planning, Doctor Who is finally in a studio (one of the smallest and least sophisticated at the BBC’s disposal, naturally), though the show is fighting for its life up to the moment of broadcast and beyond.

Order this series on DVDwritten by Mark Gatiss
directed by Terry McDonough
music by Edmund Butt

Cast: David Bradley (William Hartnell), Ross Gurney-Randall (Reg), Roger May (Len), Sam Hoare (Douglas Camfield), Doctor WhoCharlie Kemp (Arthur), Brian Cox (Sydney Newman), William Russell (Harry – Security Guard), Jeff Rawle (Mervyn Pinfield), Andrew Woodall (Rex Tucker), Jessica Raine (Verity Lambert), Jemma Powell (Jacqueline Hill), Lesley Manville (Heather Hartnell), Cara Jenkins (Judith Carney), Sacha Dhawan (Waris Hussein), Toby Hadoke (Cyril), Sarah Winter (Delia Derbyshire), Jamie Glover (William Russell), Claudia Grant (Carole Ann Ford), David Annen (Peter Brachacki), Mark Eden (Donald Baverstock), Ian Hallard (Richard Martin), Nicholas Briggs (Peter Hawkins), Carole Ann Ford (Joyce), Reece Pockney (Alan), Reece Shearsmith (Patrick Troughton), Anneke Wills (Farewell party attendee), Jean Marsh (Farewell party attendee), Anna-Lisa Drew (Maureen O’Brien), Sophie Holt (Jackie Lane)

Notes: Numerous actors appear in this movie who have appeared in actual episodes of Doctor Who before, not least of which are surviving members of the original 1963 cast William Russell and Carole Ann Ford, who played Ian and Susan respectively. David Doctor WhoBradley appeared in the 2012 episode Dinosaurs In A Spaceship as the episode’s villain, while Jessica Raine guest starred in 2013’s Hide. Hartnell-era companions Jean Marsh and Anneke Wills – both of whom reprise their 1960s roles for Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas – appear as partygoers at Verity Lambert’s farewell party. Big Finish Doctor Who producer Nicholas Briggs, the voice of the Daleks in modern Doctor Who, appears (in a wig) as 1960s Dalek voice originator Peter Hawkins.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

The Next Doctor

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Doctor WhoThe TARDIS lands in London, 1851, at Christmastime, but before the Doctor can even be serenaded by carolers, someone is calling his name. He discovers a woman in an alleyway, but even though he’s arrived to save the day, she doesn’t stop calling for help until another man shows up – another man claiming that he is the Doctor. Some sort of Cyber-converted creature bursts out of a building, leading both Doctors on a wild goose chase until they lose track of it, but then the Doctor – and the Doctor who was already on the case in 1851 – encounter real Cybermen, apparently escaped from the Void. Curiously, this other Doctor remembers nothing of his tenth incarnation, who then discovers why: this Doctor isn’t the man he says he is. But why does he think he’s another incarnation of the Doctor, and what monstrous plans are afoot that involve the Cybermen enslaving the children of London?

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Russell T. Davies
directed by Andy Goddard
music by Murray Gold

Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Davis Morrissey (Jackson Lake), Dervia Kirwan (Miss Hartigan), Velile Tshabalala (Rosita), Rauri Mears (Cybershade), Paul Kasey (Cyberleader), Edmund Kenie (Mr. Scoones), Michael Bertenshaw (Mr. Cole), Jason Morell (Vicar), Neil McDermott (Jed), Ashley Horne (Lad), Tom Langford (Frederic), Jordan Southwell (Urchin), Matthew Allick (Docker), Nicholas Briggs (Cyber voices)

The Next DoctorNotes: While Peter Davison reappeared as the fifth Doctor in Time Crash, and Human Nature‘s Journal of Impossible Things showed sketches of all of David Tennant’s predecessors in the role of the Doctor, The Next Doctor marks the first time that actual footage from the original series or the 1996 TV movie have been incorporated into the new series, with a brief clip of each Doctor. The potential inconsistency of the alternate universe/”Cybus” Cybermen having information about the Doctor’s prior regenerations is avoided with the Doctor’s conjecture that these Cybermen stole the information from the Daleks in the Void, which also explains why few if any of the clips are from Cybermen stories (though they’re not necessarily from Dalek stories either).

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green