The latest “Classic Doctors, New Monsters” set has arrived and with it the first proper original Fourth Doctor / Sarah Jane solo story, which is nice as Sadie Miller does such a great job with her mother’s role. Sadly, I guess, the villain of this story is the Harmony Shoal, the brain-looking aliens from the rather weak “Return of Doctor Mysterio” Christmas Special. Can they be redeemed?! Well, no… they’re just your standard body-stealing parasite sci-fi cliché, it’s hard to do anything too original with them, but at least you can craft a fun, if not predictable, story though…
Like so many stories The Doctor (Tom Baker) and Sarah Jane (Sadie Miller) arrive on a strange and beautiful planet for a looksie, in this case the “crystal forests of Systalzyn”, a place where the air is filled with micro crystal particles that when agitated can turn into sold azbantium (the fictional crystal that the wall the Twelfth Doctor had to punch through in all-time classic Heaven Sent) but their peaceful stroll is ruined when a spaceship crashes just over the horizon. The Doctor and Sarah investigate and come across people from a nearby research station, and together they take an alien body back with them, one that is showing brain activity but otherwise looks quite dead. The leader of this base is Lina Kalpar (Juliet Aubrey) and she takes The Doctor in her stride all things considered, while Eban Jansen (Peter Bankolé) is your younger, inexperienced member of the crew who strikes up a friendship with Sarah and Doctor Juliet Jasp (Helen Llyod) is your classic medical examiner that hand-waves the improbable things The Doctor theorises.
It’s not hard to see where this goes! Doctor Jasp is left alone with the body and then later mysteriously leaves back to the ship by herself, and soon The Doctor finds out that the brain in the body from the ship isn’t the alien one it came with, it was Jasps. Sarah and Eban had followed the scientist there and soon find Lina, who likewise followed Jasp but soon the sounds of a terrifying monster scare Sarah and Eban away while Lina bravely stays behind, but in actuality she had already had her brain replaced by a Harmony Shoal and she soon relocates all the other Shoal brains to the main base. The Doctor and Sarah arrive back at the ship and he finally puts everything together, including that the monster was just an audio recording, but its too late and the ship is set to explode in mere seconds…
I mean, to be fair to the story, its title is telling you “this is a story very similar to that other body snatching alien story you’ve seen copied and parodied so often” and it is a fun story, well acted and all that. It’s just it will never take you by surprise either.
The Continuity:
The overall boxset cover, teasing the next few Who reviews to come!
As mentioned there is a lot of callbacks to the Twelfth Doctor here, not just the returning foe in the Harmony Shoal from “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” (who, for the record, are aware of the events of that story, making this after Mysterio for them but obviously WAY before it for The Doctor!) but as mentioned in the review the use of Azbantium, which was used for dramatic effect in “Heaven Sent”.
Overall Thoughts:
Sometimes a story doesn’t give you a fresh take on an old concept, it just gives you a good example of that old concept, and so long as you’re in the right mood that’s perfectly fine. It’s a well written, well acted story that’s a perfectly good example of alien body snatching fiction, it just won’t catch you off guard with a fresh idea or unexpected twist while it does it.
The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to agitate the molecules around himself and Sarah to encase them in azbantium so they survive the blast but they don’t break free until a week later, so when they arrive at the base seemingly everyone has been taken over by the Shoal. Eban claims to have tricked them by using makeup to make it look like he’s had his brain cut out but ends up taking Sarah and The Doctor straight to Lina, who then deems The Doctor worthy of having a high-ranking Shoal put into his head and he’s escorted off to have the procedure. He returns with his scar and starts ordering people about but also quickly reveals its all a ruse as he starts typing away on a computer console, turns out Eban had been telling the truth but he was being monitored at the time.
The Doctor plays the sonic screwdriver frequency across the whole base and leaves with Sarah and Eban in time to avoid being encased in azbantium, which is how the whole base and all the Shoal end up. Eban waits for the rescue team while The Doctor and Sarah leave together…
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